Are You Level-Headed?

The purpose of this blog is to bring some balance to the Shabbat table... Please share...
In memory of Dovid ben Eliezer.

Last week's message about greatness makes it easy to transition to this week's memorial to my father of blessed memory, whose seventeenth yahrzeit was observed on Monday. 

My father was a tool guy. 

He didn't own every tool, but he was comfortable using just about any one of them. I think that his workbench was always such a mess because it was in constant use. He always used his awl to prep for driving a screw, and he tightened a loose screw with Elmer's glue and a broken toothpick. 

All this and more I learned at a very young age. 

(Including that a square isn't square.)

He was particularly fond of well-designed tools, like that cool ergonomic ratchet screwdriver (it was similar to this but with a spherical handle - the Easy Driver).

What did he do with all of these tools and tricks? 

As far as I recall, only practical home improvement projects. 

For instance, he built my childhood bed, complete with trundle, from scratch.

He repaired broken lamps. 

All small projects: big projects they left to the pros, like the time they hired a contractor to build a new back deck. This deck included a stack of horizontal one-by-eights (I think) on the back side to serve as a privacy fence.

Admiring his new deck in the bright summer sunshine, Dad got the idea in his head that it would be cool to have a built-in bench along that fence.

Literally cool: the fence would create a shady spot to eat breakfast and read the newspaper.

Out came the tape measure, the saw horse, and the buzz saw (he never called it a circular saw).

And — crucially — the level. Dad was so careful to measure and level with such perfection that when he finished that bench, you could have used it to calibrate satellites. 

Here's the problem: the contractor who built the fence had not been so precise with his level. Dad's perfect bench was not parallel to the boards behind it. It was close.... but this was neither horseshoes nor hand grenades....

Bottom-line: it looked awkward. 

So picture this situation. You've put all this work into it, you've put away your tools and cleaned up, and it looks awkward.

You basically have three options:

1. Call the contractor and ask him to correct his fence.
2. Adjust your bench to match the fence.
3. Leave it alone and live with the awkward imbalance for years to come.

What would you guess my father did?

What would you do? 


Shabbat Shalom


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