David Heiller
Challenges come in all shapes and sizes. For a baseball player to bat .400, that’s a challenge. For an executive to earn $892,000, as does the head of Pillsbury, that’s a challenge.
Sometimes, challenges go unnoticed that may be just as important to the individual as those that make the headlines. I can think of a few, and I bet you can too.
One is the tea challenge, or the Tea Cup, driving to work without spilling your hot coffee, or tea, in my case. This competition has certain ground rules. The cup must he filled to the brim when you leave the house, and it must be boiling in the cup, so that a spill will sear flesh and possibly affect your regenerative future. You must also drive a stick shift. The car must have at least 100,000 miles on it. You must cover at least five miles of gravel road with the full cup, in northern Pine County. Roads closer to the county seat are too well maintained to be part of the Tea Cup.
Often, I’m lucky to get out of the driveway before spilling my tea. Sometimes I back over the logs that are waiting to be cut up by the garage. Backing over the logs sends tea cascading off the cup platform by my knee, usually into my briefcase on the floor.
Sometimes the curve at the end of the driveway spills the cup, since I’m often late for work, and am going 30 miles an hour by the time I get the 20 yards to that corner.
Once out of the driveway, the greatest hazard is shifting gears, especially in Lucy. The 1979 Bobcat with 156,000 miles does a two-step when changing gears, if she doesn’t stall first. With all this lurching, you have to be holding the cup of tea, which means one hand on the steering wheel, one hand on the stick shift, and one hand on the cup of tea. Three hands are better than one.
But there are those days that you can brag about, the rare days when you make it out of the driveway, around the curves, over the potholes, and onto the blacktop, as the tea cools to 130 degrees and you can sample it with a cautious slurp.
I had such a day about three weeks ago. I had made it out of Denham, on the detour road, heading for Sturgeon Lake. The cup of tea, still full to the brim, as waiting at my side. I was reaching for it confidently, smiling in anticipation, when the road opened up before me in washboard glory. Lucy bounced wildly over several dozen small canyons in the road. The jolt caused the door on my side to swing open. Instinctively, I reached down with my right hand and grabbed the tea, before it could tip over into my briefcase. Not a drop spilled. I slowed Lucy, grabbed the door and swung it shut, and proceeded on my way.
That was the most enjoyable cup of tea I’d ever drunk. I felt I’d earned it. The Tea Cup was mine for the day.
Challenges like this will never be applauded like the baseball player named to the Hall of Fame for his .400 average or the executive honored for his leadership and his high salary.
But little accomplishments may be just as important, in a relative way. The Tea Cup was a funny example, here’s a more serious one: A month ago, I was babysitting the child of a friend. Andrew, a nine-month-old boy, was sitting backwards on the, edge of the couch, his butt hanging over edge. I was standing about 10 feet away. He had his back to me, and in an, instant, I saw what he was losing his balance, and was falling backward off the couch, his nine-month-old mega-head about to meet our hardwood floor.
I dove across the room, parallel to the floor, arms outstretched. My elbows hit first, just as my arms slid under the baby head and knees, three inches from the floor.
In that split second, it was over. Andrew lay on the floor in my arms, unhurt, wondering what he was suddenly doing there, what I was doing there, holding him on the floor.
I lay there too, laughing, my elbows crying, thinking, “That catch was just as spectacular as the one Willie Mays made against Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series. But no one will ever know.”
Such is the nature of domestic challenges.
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