The Tow Job

I learned something important about myself today – I’m a perfectionist. Ya, you’re right. We’ve all known that for years. But today I successfully accomplished a task I felt terrified to do, had never done before, and then judged myself for not doing it perfectly.

Let me explain.

Darcy came in from hauling manure and started looking things up on his phone with that, “I’m upset and figuring things out, don’t mess with me” sort of expression. Naturally, I asked what the problem was and came to find out the tractor had died in the field while pulling the manure spreader. Not only had he just walked home (no phone with him) he had 45 minutes of daylight left to solve the problem. He ran a bunch of scenarios through my head (funny how saying things out loud always makes them clearer and easier to handle) and decided the best thing to do was get the tractor home to figure out the mechanical problem. This of course, created another problem because the tractor brakes are hydraulic and operate when the machine does. He said he might have just enough battery to around the corner and down the hills to home – if he was being towed. By me. In the pickup. With a chain. My stomach clenched. Surely there must be another way? Well, if you count him driving backward in the skid steer with the bucket holding the tractor, there certainly was. So, not really.

We drove back to the scene of the crime and for not the first time, I was struck by the size of the tractor and the length of it plus the manure spreader. My eye followed a chain from the front axel of the tractor to the hitch of the pickup to Darcy’s face.

“You’ve got this.”

I most certainly did not got this.

We took a dry run along the field edge to the road approach, noted where the holes were, where to hit the gas, where to crank the wheel and where to hope for the best.

“What if I tip you over?”

“I won’t tip over.”

“I don’t want to kill you.”

“You’re not going to kill me.”

I have never driven with a trailer, camper, or wagon on the truck, let alone pulling the maker of happy breakfasts perched in the cab of a tractor that “should” have enough battery to run the brakes followed by a half-completed job of nutrient redistribution system material. The whole thing literally smelled like shit.

Darcy's final words of advice were, “Even if you start spinning your tires, keep going.”

It started to sound dystopian and I felt tears in my eyes for no reason beyond absolute fear of being responsible for Darcy’s gruesome end.

I got in the truck.

He got in the tractor.

I pressed the gas pedal and heard the chain pull tight, felt the tug on the truck. Darcy waved through the glass. I pressed the gas harder and we moved. My own little convoy moved a foot along the field. Then another. And another. As we came to the road approach I remembered his words – hit the gas, cross the road and make a wide turn left. I went. He followed. I couldn’t see the manure spreader behind the tractor, but I could see him in the mirrors waving me on. Or was he telling me to stop? I was on the road, I was turning, we were up out of the road approach, and he continued to wave. I stopped and rolled the window down.

“GO!”

Right. He’d said he’d honk the horn if I needed to stop. Mistake number one.

Keep a steady 15 miles an hour he had said. It felt most important to keep a steady speed since he didn’t have much battery for braking. I watched the speedometer, moving my eyes methodically between the side mirror where I could see Darcy, the needle glued to the 15-mph dash, and the rear-view mirror (very unhelpful). I saw the hazard lights blinking. I pulled up the hill and coasted a bit down the other side. When I accelerated, I felt the chain tug again and hoped it wasn’t too much of a jerk.

The driveway came into view. Darcy hadn’t given me a lesson on turning here, nor on navigating the turns to get back to the shed. With no way of knowing the amount of space he’d need to make the turn while coasting, I just…turned. Magically he followed. The second curve. He made it. The third. The fourth. I’ve never been so happy to see a pile of wood chips, cows and a shed!

I came to a stop, and he got out.

“Is where you want it?”

“Yes, I’ll push it into the shed from here.”

I turned off the engine and got out. Walter the cat came over and greeted us with judgmental meows of the supper we unceremoniously deposited in the porch on the way out. I hugged Darcy and he grinned.

“You did it.”

“I did. Would you say it was an A- or a B+?”

“A-.”

And that’s when it happened. My heart sank and I felt deflated. An A-? Not an A? Of course not. I did this and this and this wrong--I ticked the errors off a mental list. I felt shame and regret at the imperfection of the task, realized the signs were all there about when and how I could have done it better. He gave me the higher of the two grades I had offered as choices. He seemed happy with the whole thing—though I know that stop I made upset him. But yet…here was the anxious little girl who needed the best outcome, whose identity rested on that perfection. EVEN THOUGH I HAD NEVER DONE IT. My adult mind chastised my silliness. But here I was, thinking back to the conversation with my adult kiddo the night before about my first chair clarinet challenges. Her opinion held that I was in the wrong for being competitive enough to hate losing my first chair position to another student and challenging them back after two weeks. That it was vindictive of me to want my position back, to win the competition and get first chair back. I held that it was that sense of perfection and wanting to be the best that propelled me forward in everything – if there was a top, a lead, a head of something, a best to be achieved, I was going to do it. It was a motivator for me to achieve and do well in school, and now work.

So the moral of the story is: I will always analyze what I did wrong so I can make it right, do better, and achieve more. I will always grade myself harshly so others don’t have to. I will always find the motivation to be better and do good work internally rather than externally, but the gratification of knowing others see me as a leader, thinker, and someone to be emulated is welcome and necessary to replenish the boiler and created steam for the next task.

I did the thing. I did it well enough to call it a success. Next time, I’ll kick ass :)