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Somebody else's blunders Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Him)By Rick Horowitz These are wondrous times for twitchy folks. You pick up the newspaper, turn on the TV, and the hits just keep on coming. One day it's Mars: a multi-million-dollar spacecraft losing its way as it tries to move in for a closer look at our mysterious red neighbor. Somebody forgot to convert certain pounds-and-feet-type thruster measurements to metric, and the orbital calculations went all wrong. Oops. Another day it's Japan: radiation spewing from an out-of-control chain reaction at a nuclear processing plant not far from Tokyo. Somebody poured more than 35 pounds of uranium fuel into a purification tank when they were supposed to pour only 5.2 pounds. There was a sudden blue flash, and then -- For twitchy folks, it doesn't get much better than this. Somebody messed up big time, and it wasn't you. Wasn't me, that is. I'm one of the twitchy folks -- one of those people who live in constant sweaty-palm-and-hummingbird-heart fear of making a mistake, no matter how tiny, no matter how meaningless. There's nothing like a space disaster or a possible nuclear meltdown to put a smile on our faces. Don't get me wrong. I'm hardly ecstatic that 125 million bucks went down the toilet because some rocket scientists forgot to act like rocket scientists and do a basic bit of math. And I'm certainly not thrilled that anybody anywhere might have been exposed to major doses of nukes on the loose. But I'm looking at the bigger picture: There was human error, and I wasn't the human! Praise the Lord and pass the antacids. You wouldn't think it to look at me, I know, but beneath this jaunty, confident exterior lies a quivering core of total Jell-O. I exist in absolute fear of The Big One -- the inexplicable oversight or irretrievable stumble, the casual carelessness or the brazen brain lock that finally blows the cover off this tidy little life of mine. Of course, I'm pretty much petrified of The Small One, too -- the errant phrase, the typo, the misfingered digit on the pocket calculator. I'm the one who wakes up in the middle of the night and goes racing across the room in search of an almanac: Was it Louis XIV, or Louis XVI? Did I get it right in that story I wrote three weeks ago? I'm the one who knows -- who knows -- that George Bush was elected president in 1988, that Matt Damon has never won the Nobel Prize in Economics, that The Bronx Bombers play baseball in The Bronx. I'm the one who'll look it all up anyway, just to be sure. And then look it up again, just to be sure I looked it up correctly the first time. I'm the one with the major case of "mailer's remorse": At the precise moment the mailbox lid clangs shut on one of my letters, I become suddenly, absolutely convinced that I've rendered "Dear Jerry" as "Dear Jerky," "Sincerely" as "Sinfully." Not that I hadn't proofread the thing a half-dozen times before I ever dropped it into the slot; I'll still go tearing back home and sprinting up the stairs to check my copy before the Postal Service can send my shame screaming across the country. It's fine, my letter. It's almost always fine. And if it hadn't been? What if I had made a mistake? Not exactly a ruined space ship. Not exactly a nuclear calamity. Exactly. "To err is human," said Alexander Pope, "to forgive divine." I'm hoping maybe I can use these latest screw-ups (somebody else's screw-ups, don't forget) for more than just a sigh of relief and a hearty "There but for the grace of God..." A little sense of proportion would be nice. There are major goofs, after all, and there are minor goofs. Everyone messes up occasionally. I'm allowed to be less than perfect. People will understand. People will forgive. People -- I think it was Pope. I'd better check.... Posted 10/5/99. Visiting
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Rick Horowitz