Impatience Inferno

Once upon a time, a baseball field in Connecticut was so soggy that it jeopardized whether or not an important high school baseball game would be able to be played.  So players and parents decided that they'd dry that field out themselves, instead of waiting around for Ma Nature to do it for them.  

And they decided that the best way to do this was to douse the baseball field with gasoline and light it on fire.  Because fire's hot.  And it dries things out.

So far, so good, right?  

But in a stunning and shocking turn of events, rather than bending to the will of its human overlords and stopping when the field was dry, the fire got Out of Control Big Time.  That field ended up on Team Extra-Crispy.  Scorched Earth.  And the ballgame couldn't be played there until, like... infinity.

It's fun and easy to laugh at those people who thought they could dry a soggy baseball field by setting it on fire.  I had quite a few chuckles and a good belly-laugh over it myself.  Obviously.  I mean, I'm writing about it today.  Showing some appreciation for such a high level of well-meaning shenaniganry.  

On the other hand, though, I may not have set a ball field on fire to dry it out, but I've committed some (okay, LOTS of) mis-whinnies in the name of being "efficient."  "Efficient" is pronounced "impatient," in this case.  You can tell because when you're efficient, things get done in the best way, in the best order, in the quickest manner possible.  When you're impatient, you end up leaping over a meadow-muffin to avoid getting your shoes soiled and then you fall face-first into a whole pile of shit.

Like when I decide I'm going to carry in the entire carload of groceries in one trip, even though it's too heavy and unwieldy, and I trip over the threshold and drop the eggs and they all break.  Or I slather-ass what should be an easy project, or a basic step in a larger project, in the interest of saving a minute or two, only to have to take it right back to the Start Point and then my time working on the project has quadrupled.  I bet you have some doozies, too, Friends.

I know better.  You know better.  We all know better than to try to hurry something up that should be taken one step at a time.  But we do it anyway.  I think even those baseball parents and players that set the field on fire knew it wasn't the best idea, but their "get-there-itis" overrode rational thought.  And they made a nationally-distributed news publication for it.   And all this time later, because I procrastinate so hard, we're still talking about it.

And the rest of us need to look at this as a cautionary tale.  "There, but for the Grace of God, go I..."  We're all just one weird bounce or poor decision done in the name of haste from winding up on the national news ourselves, Friends.  

And you can bet if I see a name or locale I recognize in the newsy note, I'm gonna write about it!