The Law of Limitations

I don’t do many things well. I make mistakes that need to be corrected, or at least admitted. I keep bumping into the limits of my skills and knowledge. When that happens, which is too frequently, I lean on the wisdom of Harry Callahan (the cop played by Clint Eastwood): “A man’s got to know his limitations.” So with that in mind I try to respect my boundaries.

I was in a hardware store the other day trying to figure out how to fix something - or at least not make it any worse for the professional who would eventually be summoned to take over. The gray-haired clerk who waited on me looked to be about retirement age. Now that used to mean about 65 (which is what I guessed him to be), but with the sharp decline in retirement accounts that age has increased to about 106.

There was something about him that distracted me. I knew him, or at least I used to, but I couldn’t fill in the blanks. Unable to place his face I closed my eyes and concentrated on the sound of his voice. The smooth, confident sound matched a tone from somewhere out of my past. Sometimes a scent will trigger a memory – but I wasn’t about to get close enough for a whiff. So unable to impress him with my knack for remembering names I broke down and admitted my failing.

“I feel like I should know you, but I can’t come up with why or where.”

For the next few minutes he and I talked about things like our church patronage and preferred hang-outs. When that didn’t produce a shared path he asked me where I grew up. When I told him Belle Plaine his eyes lit up, and then just as quickly they took on that far-away look as he replayed the past.

“Well,” he said, “I was a Deputy Sheriff for Scott County about the time you would have been in school.”

We didn’t have a regular police force for much of my youth in Belle Plaine. The town relied on the Sheriff’s office to maintain law and order. So each time I encountered the law it was likely a Deputy Sheriff who had traveled down Hwy. 169 from Shakopee.

He and I looked at each other and then I smiled; I remembered him now. I apologized for all the gray hairs I had caused him. I also thanked him for all the advice he had given me many years ago: Slow down, clean that up, put that back where you found it, get down from there, go home, have a seat and watch your head.

As I have got older I have felt the need to patch things up, to make things right - to apologize to those I have wronged. I am not ready to go so far as to accept responsibility and offer reparations for the wrongs caused by slavery, Columbus, the crusades, or Cain. But to be clear, I do want to clean up my own mess. I have gone back to my high school to see some of my teachers. They had given me breaks and second chances over and over again. So I went back there to apologize and thank them. But not all of them though.

Mrs. Keim gave me an F-minus on a drawing of an apple. I wasn’t finished with it. But when she handed the graded drawing back to me I laughed. I have never been able to draw well. But I’m O.K. with that. I know my limitations.