Perfectionism is never perfect. It leaves a scar.
A story: About five years ago, my older son, then about 14, called me one day at work.
"Hey, I'm at the World's Longest Yard Sale," he said. "And I want to ask you a question."
"OK, shoot," I said.
"I want to buy a go-kart," he said. "I'll use my own money."
"How much is it?" I asked.
"$500," he said.
Hmm. My dad brain knew the correct answer was "No!" But, instead, I stalled by asking questions: Does it run? Who's selling it? How would you get it home? Where would you ride it?
In the meantime, my brain was trying to answer a harder question: Saying no might be defensible, but is it desirable?
I made a snap decision.
"OK," I said, reluctantly. "You can buy it. But if it doesn't work, it's on you."
Long story short, the go-kart came home, ran for 10 minutes and then quit. The seller was long gone. It went under a tarp in the backyard, where it stayed for five years.
A better dad would have come to the rescue, but I let it sit as a life lesson. Years later, my older son would tell me he sometimes felt let down by my inability to share his enthusiasm for things like the go-kart.
When he went off to college last year, he gave the go-kart to a neighborhood teen whose dad was mechanically inclined enough, and invested enough, to get it running.
Then, last month, when that family moved from our street, they offered to give the go-kart back to our younger son, who immediately turned to me with wide eyes.
"Sure," I said. "You can have it, but you can't ride it on the main road."
He rode it up and down the cul-de-sac for a couple of weeks and then started to take it apart. Almost before I realized what was happening, it was in pieces on the garage floor. Frame here, engine here, wheels there.
"Um, what are you doing?" I inquired.
"I'm taking it all apart. I'm going to paint all the pieces and put it back together," he said.
Thus commenced weeks of disassembling, sanding and grinding until nearly every square millimeter of the frame was bare metal. It seemed like every day day we were off to Ace Hardware for sandpaper or bolts or spray paint.
Work on the go-kart seemed to be coming along nicely, but one day I saw him sitting inside on the couch with his arms crossed.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"I can't get all the paint off," he said.
I had seen the work, and he was talking about specks.
"Buddy, it doesn't have to be perfect," I said. "It looks amazing. Remember, we don't do 'perfect' around here."
"I just want it to look good," he said, before gathering himself to return to the garage.
A few days later, he had the frame tied to the basketball goal in the driveway, spritzing it with a can of red spray paint.
It was beginning to look really good, but I noticed some of the over-spray was drifting onto the driveway. If you stepped back, you could vaguely see a red tint to the blacktop.
"So, it looks like you are painting my driveway," I said, flatly.
He immediately looked at his feet. I could see his face drop.
"Oh, Daddy, I'm so sorry. Let me get the pressure washer out. I didn't know that was happening. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. Really, I didn't know."
I immediately realized that I was breaking my own rule against perfectionism. In the grand scheme of things, a few flecks of paint on a 35-year-old driveway wasn't worth mentioning.
"Don't worry about it," I said, giving him a side hug. "I'm proud of you for all your hard work. Just put some newspaper down when you get a chance."
"OK, Daddy," he said. "I love you."
"I love you too, Son," I said with a wink.
Life is so much better when we don't allow perfectionism to get in the way of what really matters.
Email Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com.