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If At First You
Don't Succeed...Aw, Forget It
by Mad Dog
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There’s a fine line between tenacity and wasting your time. |
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Growing up we were always
told that “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Of
course that was before Obsessive Compulsive Disorder became a parental
fear second only to finding razor blades in Halloween candy or having a
child who—gasp!— doesn’t want to grow up to have an MBA. Is it any
wonder so many parents check on their kids five, six, seven times a day?
Okay, an hour. But hey, you can never be too careful.
The idea behind the adage was that
you shouldn’t give up. Ever. Failure was unacceptable and grounds for
committing Hara-kiri, which confused us no end since we couldn’t
figure out why a sports announcer or old Western star should have to go
into the mental hospital just because we were incompetent underachievers
who didn’t know what the word “tenacity” meant. Or Hari-kari,
obviously. The point was, we were supposed to keep at it.
This is still good advice, though
even tenacity has its limits. Take the 68-year-old South Korean woman
who has taken, and failed, her written driver’s test 771 times since
2005. And plans on taking it until she passes, even though she’s
already spent $3,000 on exam fees, sells items from a handcart, and even
if she does manage to pass will still need to take the road exam. Like
Rod Blagojevich, you don’t see her quitting. Though maybe she should.
After all, there’s a fine line between tenacity and wasting your time.
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The union that
represented the laid-off workers is predictably in an uproar, though the
truth is they should be embarrassed that it’s taking half as many
prisoners to do the work their members used to do.
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Then there’s Harry Stonebraker, who ran for mayor of Winfield,
MO, and was elected to his fourth term, garnering 90 percent of the
votes. So what if he died a month before the election, that’s not
important. What is important is that even in death he continued to show
the kind of stick-to-it-iveness that would make any parent proud.
Whether they’d be so proud of those who voted for him is another
question altogether.
Tenacity is an
important virtue to have these days. It’s what we need if we’re
going to get through the current global financial crisis with our homes,
bank accounts, and retirement years intact, though I have to admit that
just to play it safe I’ve been working on a new retirement
plan—standing in front of the mirror practicing saying, “Would you
like fries with that?” While the government is working on the problem,
it’s using its own version of the adage: “If at first you don’t
succeed, throw more money at it,” which is pretty scary in itself.
After all, no two economists—better yet experts like cab
drivers—agree on what will work, which is why the fiscal crisis is
being treated by trial and error. While this pretty much is the
definition of “try, try again,” it doesn’t exactly instill
confidence.
Since tenacity alone won’t get us
through this, we also need to be innovative and creative, like they are
in Navestock, a village 25 miles outside of London. They’re
considering helping their fiscal situation by not bothering to repair
potholes. They figure that by doing nothing they’ll not only save
money, but will save lives as well by forcing drivers to slow down.
Think: negative speed bumps. Sure it might wind up costing car owners a
little extra when a wheel gets knocked out of round, the front-end needs
to be aligned, or a silly old tie-rod breaks, but that’s a small price
to pay to save the government a few bucks. After
all, as any taxpayer knows, even though money can be both created and
destroyed, it will always come out of your pocket.
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Why not let
prisoners sleep in museums? Since
most of the art is hanging on the walls, there’s a lot of unused floor
space. And the building’s aren’t being used during the night.
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Another innovative idea comes from the state of Ohio, which
because of budget cuts laid off 17 janitors and groundskeepers from the
Statehouse staff in Columbus. Okay, that part’s not particularly
innovative, but since it’s obvious the legislators aren’t about to
mow the lawn or take out their trash, the board that operates the
Statehouse decided to use seven prisoners to help out. The union that
represented the laid-off workers is predictably in an uproar, though the
truth is they should be embarrassed that it’s taking half as many
prisoners to do the work their members used to do.
Speaking of saving money and prisoners, one place we could save
big time would be by figuring out how to rein in the cost of housing
them. Experts say the prison
population in the United States will grow by more than 600,000 over the
next 10 years. To put that into perspective, it’s nearly the number of
new stores Starbucks will open during the same time period. Where will
we put them all? Not the Starbucks—lord knows
there are more than enough blocks that don’t have three of them
yet—but rather where are we going to house the new prisoners?
Why not let them sleep in museums? Since
most of the art is hanging on the walls, there’s a lot of unused floor
space. And the building’s aren’t being used during the night. Not to
mention that any museum worth a line item in a state budget already has
a full compliment of guards, surveillance cameras in every corner, and a
security system even George Clooney would find daunting in Oceans 18.
This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and each one is
worth a try. And if these ideas don’t work, well, we can always try,
try again.
©2009 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country.
Keep trying to read them.
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