D,s;;yslrd vsm trdi;y om noh vpmdrwirmvrd.
Small mistakes can result in big consequences. The sentence above is the result of the first one in this paragraph if one moves the fingers five-eights of an inch to the right on the keyboard. Moving one keyboard letter to the right can result in the wrong message, or no message at all. 5/8’ to the right turns I love you! into o ;pbr upi@. Small mistake, but gibberish.
Inattention to mistakes can lead to foul aftermaths, some minor, some disastrous.
A driver taking eyes her off the road for five seconds to read a cell phone text message resulted in a crash that left her a lifelong paraplegic.
Forgetting to check the tightness of the nuts securing the bar on the chain saw resulted in the user losing three fingers from his left hand.
Mistakenly texting an intimate message intended for one’s mistress to one’s wife triggered the end of the marital relationship. (The original blunder, of course, was having a mistress in the first place.)
A woman started her 15-mile, solo mountain hike on a gloriously clear day. At the turn around point the weather changed . . . rain and a 20-degree temperature drop. Not carrying raingear or any extra cold-weather clothing, she was found late in the day close to death from hypothermia.
After recently completing a minor washing machine repair at home, I hooked the water lines back up and put in a load to wash. I did not check the connections, assuming they were good. They weren’t. The whole water cycle flooded a portion of the house causing over four thousand dollars of damage.
Everybody makes mistakes. An admirable life goal is to make as few of them as possible. Attention to detail and double-checking might save a lot of trouble.
A couple thousand years ago a man named Luke wrote: “Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much.” Part of it is cultivating the habit . . . the habit of attention to detail and double-checking. There is no such thing as a full-proof system, but one can certainly push the odds in one’s favor by due diligence in both thinking and acting.
I was just about to drive away from home pulling my mid-size utility trailer. As I shifted my truck into gear and was about to press the gas pedal, a small bell went off in the back of my head. I thought I had double-checked the trailer hookup, but something compelled me to check again. Putting the truck in park and setting the emergency brake, I went back to the hitch . . . to find that I had not hooked up the safety chains. If I had driven away with them unhooked, maybe nothing would have happened. It also could have resulted in a major highway accident.
D,s;;yslrd vsm trdi;y om noh vpmdrwirmvrd. Yslr vstr/
