| Thursday, July 28, 2005 |
| Pure Genius |
 I wasn't there to see Leonardo Da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa. I wasn't there to see Michelangelo paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And I wasn't there to see James Wright invent Silly Putty. Even though I missed the moments of creative genius, I was able to witness one last night:
I saw Paul Carlile pack a POD.
You might think that this didn't rank up with those other moments, but you would be wrong. All I could do was step back and watch an master artist fill his canvas with expressive brilliance. In this case, the canvas was an empty POD, and the paints were our furniture. So I guess following with this metaphor, the paint brushes were his arms . . . and I'm not sure if the easel was my driveway or my couch . . . but you get what I'm saying.
When we invited a few people over to help us pack [thanks Carol and Tim too] I anticipated throwing a bunch of stuff in and being done in an hour. If it were up to Tim and me, we would have jammed the big stuff in and worked our way back. No, not with Paul. When he showed up, he began surveying the scene to see exactly what we had. Then in Tetris-like fashion, he began to stack arrangements of boxes and cabinets in a way that I had never seen before. I had no idea, when we asked him to help, that he was so masterful. At first, we brought him what he asked for. By the end, we just got of the way. I didn't want to even talk to much so that I didn't disturb the process. By the end of the evening, he could've packed the entire neighborhood's possessions into our POD. I kid you not, even this morning I'm still amazed at the job he did.
Now I'm not saying I figured everything out by watching Paul in action, but I suspect the key to doing a packing job like his is patience. If it were just me running things last night, I would have tried to get finished as quickly as possible. Even though Paul was very fast, he's stop every few minutes to deliberate what would go next; he was thinking five steps ahead. For the last half hour or so he kept asking, "that's it?" We could have help onto all the junk we've been getting rid of the past few weeks with his packing skills around. Sure, it wouldn't have all fit into our new condo, but Paul would've come up with a way to make it happen.
The hilarious thing is that I frantically called the POD company this weekend to get the bigger unit. I was really afraid that we'd run out of space, so we upgraded from the 12 foot to the 16 foot POD. Once again, my lack of faith was on display. I'll never, ever doubt again. Promise.
So here's to you Paul. I had no idea I was in the presence of such greatness. |
yet another musing of steve-o @ 8:11:00 AM  |
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