I once had an argument with a friend of mine about government inspectors, of whom he felt there were entirely too many. His argument, basically, was this: when left to their own devices, people tend to do things correctly. They wash their hands before making your sausage, use the proper ratio of sand and gravel when mixing the cement for your bridges, and check the oil level in your airliner before it takes off for a flight across the Atlantic. People will do these things, he said, not because they are basically good, but because they are basically lazy: it’s just easier to do something right the first time than to have to go back and fix it later.
At the time I didn’t really have a good argument for this (besides, of course, “Haven’t you ever read The Jungle?”), although I believed then (and still do now) that he was wrong. Now however, if I were to have that same discussion again, my response would be simple. “You don’t have any kids, do you?”
That’s because nobody can half-ass things like a child can. Whether it’s dropping their dirty clothes next to the clothes hamper, or pushing their bike to within six inches of the bike rack before letting it drop to the ground, a child can make you wonder how our ancestors ever managed to make it down out of the trees in the first place. (If the decision to evolve had been left to a child we would probably all still be living in bushes, because that’s about as far down as they would have made it before calling it a day.)
Yes, it is easier to do things right the first time. That makes no difference whatsoever, though, to a child. Take my daughter, Clementine: the other night it took her six attempts to pick up some dried spaghetti from off the floor where she had spilled it. Six. That meant six journeys from her bedroom to the kitchen, six trips to get the dust pan and broom, six trips to the garbage can. Six. And, if all the stomping and muttering were any indication, it wasn’t as if she was particularly enjoying these trips. Stomp stomp stomp she would come out of her room, called back once again to finish picking up the spaghetti.
“But I already finished!”
“Then why can I still see it on the floor?”
“There’s only a little left on the floor.”
“But I want none left on the floor—the same way the floor was before you spilled it.”
Sigh. A few more pieces would make it into the trash, and then she’d be gone again, leaving about forty pieces behind.
“Clementine!”
And back she would come, only to pick up about half and then disappear once more.
The scary thing is that in ten years she might be the person making the sausage (“What? I washed one of my hands.”). Or the person mixing the cement (“One bag of sand, ten—what difference does it make?”). Or even the person checking the oil in the airliner (“I’m sure it’s fine—I checked it last month.”).
My only hope for the future is that one day there will be people in her life who are even better at nagging than I am. The neat freak roommate who wakes her up at 3 AM demanding to know if she was the one who used his bath towel. The college professor who only accepts papers if they are formatted just so. Even the boss who stands next to the time clock glaring at her as she clocks in late. In other words, the inspectors.
If not, then in twenty years I am faced with an even scarier future—one in which she ends up being the inspector herself.