Photo by Cynthia Larsen

That headline makes me want to embroider pillows

By Ed Goldman

A local newspaper has advised me to not rake up the quadrillion leaves that stage their annual coup in my backyard every fall—and seem to have no intention of blowing out of town anytime soon, which would return my yard to local rule. 

Nutritionists have also been saying that most diets don’t work and that some people who lose weight (even on Ozempic!) gain all of it back (in triplicate) when they stop dosing. To recap, I’ve been cautioned to not slim down. 

So: Is it my imagination or has the advice business finally come around to rediscovering the wisdom of the old maxim, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? And as a follow-up question, are there any young maxims?

Even without being told, I’ve always relied on the sagacity of that adage. (For younger readers, “sagacity” isn’t a town in which everyone tells very lengthy, multi-generational stories. That’s HBO.)  

For example, many years ago I told my late father-in-law that I was having someone come over to do a winter checkup of my heater. I was a young husband and father and was trying to impress him with my grownup sense of responsibility, my own “dadness,” one might say. He asked if the heater was currently working. I said, yeah, just fine. “Then why bother?” he asked. “When it breaks down, have the guy come out.”

I was surprised by his advice because I thought “preventive maintenance” was a concept coined and codified by the Greatest Generation. I mean, my father-in-law changed the oil in his car every six months or so, even if the car’s engine had yet to overheat or experience complete failure. 

But he wasn’t a man who aerated his lawn every fall or spring, figuring the grass would simply grow back. He didn’t put up storm windows in his midwest home until after a rainstorm or small twister would convince him winter was settling in. And he wouldn’t go to the doctor for an annual physical if he felt all right, figuring if and when he fell ill there’d be time enough for that. When he finally did get sick, in his late 80s, there was nothing that could be done for him—and apparently, even if he’d gone to the doctor earlier, there would still have been nothing to do to halt the disease that would claim him. So he just went home to pass away, in pain, but also in his own home and pajamas. 

Most of us find it counterintuitive to let things be. Those things can include something left unsaid in an argument or a dishwasher that’s managing to get only half the load clean. 

It’s only the latter instance that I think may call for action—but not necessarily in a hurry, unless your warranty is about to run out. Until then, I just keep removing the clean items from the dishwasher, figure out where they were sitting that allowed them to get clean, then move the items that didn’t get clean into those slots. Dishwashers can be like real estate: it’s all about location (add two more “locations” if you must complete this simile). 

As for things left unsaid in an argument, as a guy who seems to get into one of those just by saying “How’s it goin’” to people—and I don’t mean “just by saying it to people” who’re lying in the center lane of a freeway after being flung from their Priuses because they dared to accelerate past 45 mph—I think sometimes the best way to solve an argument is to deliberately leave things unsaid.  

After all, if the argument has lasted more than an hour, you’ve probably covered all the salient points. To continue would just mean to repeat those points, then maybe roll your eyes for emphasis and make fun of what the other person’s wearing.