The Exquisite Gift of a Monumental Fuck Up

7/18/2023

Hello Son,

I’m still puzzling your reaction to our recent trip to Ellensburg. It was a Monumental Fuck Up but you didn’t (don’t?) see it that way. I think defining the term might help us reach a more mutual understanding.

Monumental Fuck Up has....let’s say three attributes.

*It comes about due to a conscious decision or series of conscious decisions by someone.

When I walk into a door or drop something on my foot (or, as often the case, both in quick succession), this is just me being my usual klutzy self. No part of my brain said, “Let’s walk that way”. No, a MFU requires a person, often both its initiator and victim, to make a decision which ends up having a bad consequence. The outcome can’t be blamed on a third party. What is the subject of most mea culpa admissions? “I”. As in, “I fucked up.”

*Sooner or later, the initiator realizes his/her mistake.

And it’s usually sooner. One helpful term related to this concept is “ohnosecond”, which is the exceedingly short time between a person hitting the “Enter” key and their realization of their mistake.

*A MFU is not a tragedy.

No, a person getting paralyzed by an auto accident or a bus load of nuns going off a cliff are just tragedies. They have consequences, causing life-long grief and suffering for those involved. What I’m referring to is almost always more low-key: more embarrassment or anguish.

So, with this framework, let’s look at one of my recent screwups to see if it has all the required attributes.

A couple weeks back, we all got new iPhones. I was the prime instigator for this decision as it had been many years since our last upgrade. To prep, I backed my phone onto the desktop. Verizon offered a data transfer service but I laughed at the idea of spending $50 for such an superfluous option. Let Lesser Mortals use such services. (LM like my wife and son.)

At this point, I was under a false impression as to what a “Data Transfer Service” would look like. In my mind’s eye, some underpaid and probably evil Verizon employee would take my phone; my personal digital assistant, (my little friend) to the back room, where he would hook it up to an dubious machine to transfer all its contents onto my new phone (both old phone and new phone looking very similar), all the which looking through the contents of many year’s worth of photos, emails, texts, notes, etc. and having a good chuckle.

Here’s what really happened. “Amber” set Xander and Wendi’s phones next to their new phones, entered a couple of passwords, and the transfer began. Took about 15 minutes.

This is one of those points where the audience starts yelling at the screen. While in the Verizon store, I literally could have set my old phone next to my new one and done the same thing. And not spent any money. But, no. I had the back up at home. I’ll do it all there.

Back in the home office. Again, rather than simply setting old phone and new phone (again, both looking very similar) side by side and letting our Wi-Fi do the work, I plugged new phone into my iMac and started the process; all the smug in my confidence that this was the best route. (Note: At least a small dollop of hubris is almost always included in these stories.)

All while this was going on, iCloud was practically begging me to back of up everything onto the Cloud. Begone, foul Apple product. Experts don’t require such minor league services.

When the sync was complete, I unhooked the new iPhone and started inventorying what had been transferred over. Hmmm. I’m noticing many missing things. At this point, I decided to quit fighting modernity and do the Wi-Fi transfer. However, in order to do so, I needed to reset my new phone to start with a clean slate. Answering an impatient “Yes” to the many iPhone dire warnings, I finally got to the Boss Level Reset and pressed away.

As you have probably figured out by now, I reset the wrong phone. And, as a result, I’ve spent the last couple of week, reconstructing my contacts and Notes. The texts? Gone. My of my Notes? Gone. My wavecable password? Gone.

None of these troubles are devastating. The contacts and their info were okay. I used my iPad’s info to redo the names. The wavecable email is a minor hassle. I could go to the Astound website to reset it but then I’d have to reset that password on three iPads, two iMacs, and Wendi’s phone. Right now, not worth it. The texts hurt but it’s not like was doing anything with them. The loss of several years of Bloon Tower Defense 6 progress? Yeah, pretty sure I’m okay moving on from that time sink.

All my writing on the iPhone Notes app? Yeah, that hurt. Most of it was drivel but in the past couple of years, it’s turned into my external memory. What horror movies did we watch in October of 2021? What were the names of Bob’s three kids? What did I get my wife for her 53rd birthday? Basically, stuff that you could ask your wife but didn’t really want to.

So, yeah. That totally sucked. But was it MFU-level? Let’s go back to the criteria to see if it fits the bill.

A) Was the Data Purge fiasco the result of my conscious decisions? Yes! I see three distinct turning points when I made a Bad Call. Nobody else influenced these choices. They were all mine. So, CHECK!

B) It took less than a minute for it to dawn on me that I’d messed up. Just the time it took me to look at my “new” phone to realize it was my “old” phone and that I had “boned” myself. CHECK

C) Frustrating? Yes. Tragic? Nope. CHECK

So, the iPhone Phiasco meets the MFU requirements. So, where does the gift part from the Title come in? Glad you asked. The gift part comes when your brain adds the final ingredient: stewing. For anywhere from a couple of hours to a several decades, your brain will remind you that you are capable of Bags of Hammers Level Stupidity. Your brain does this because it hates you. At the slightest provocation, it loves nothing more than replaying your own Epic Fail film loop.

Everyone has their own film loop and mine now contains a cautionary tale of technological overconfidence. In addition to many, many other highlights. (Or rather, lowlights.)

I’m not actually more intelligent than I was prior, but I know I’ll never make that particular mistake. Guess that’s a type of smarts.

To paraphrase from a recent play I watched, “You know how to be smart, don’t ya? You just think of the dumbest thing you can and then don’t do it.”

So, let’s do a quick recap of our recent trip east. Despite my urging, we didn’t get onto road till mid-morning. (Since Ruth slept most of the drive there, not really understanding her reluctance to leave earlier.) When we finally got to CWU, we (and by that, I mean you) didn’t know where to go. There was no plan; just sort of a “Let’s just wander about.” mentality. A campus map would have been helpful.

Since we reached Ellensburg in the early afternoon, it was hot as hell and since neither of you brought anything useful like, say, a hat, we were really feeling it; Ruth more so than us two. After less than an hour of ambling, Ruth started complaining of feeling unwell so we made a beeline to the car. There, I gave her a cold pack, a bottle of water and cranked up the a/c.

And headed home. At this point, I was a bit steamed at the complete waste of time we had just endured. I was further steamed by your insistence, despite your fiancé’s not feeling well, it had been a successful trip. That touring the Music Building (the first open building we came to) and seeing the student housing from a distance made it a successful trip. 11 hours. Full tank of gas. Several Quickie Mart stops. Hitting Friday afternoon Seattle rush hour traffic. Your fiancé feeling ill on the “tour”. And then almost soiling herself once we hit said rush hour traffic. Our having to wait over an hour at the ferry terminal. Again, 11 hours.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

And then you proceeded to watch YouTube on the way home. All that wonderful self-recrimination time wasted. My suspicion is this is why you often turn in substandard work. You don’t allow yourself time to ruminate on recent events. A mind in a constant state of distraction is a mind unable to do any sort of personal error analysis.

Me? My mind seems to do nothing but.

So, was it a MFU? Well, several poor decisions turned what could have been a nice jaunt to Ellensburg into a slog. It wasn’t a tragedy; though had Ruth stayed in the baking sun much longer, it certainly could have. And, despite your words of protest, I think you know this was a poorly planned trip. (That is, not planned in any way.) And it could have been so much better with just a little bit of forethought.

I know you really wanted Ruth to be excited about moving to CWU; that this was why the three of us went instead of just us two but I’m pretty sure this first introduction didn’t have the desired outcome.

So, yes. It was a MFU. This is not the end of world but your goal should be to avoid such cock-ups in the future. How you might do this? You must think, ponder, and most of all stew about this trip. Run that mental video reel back and forth looking for errors. Back and forth. What should I have done? Back and forth. How did Ruth feel at this point? Back and forth. What to bring to my Orientation in a couple of weeks?

I hope you’ve already thought about the trip with an eye towards not committing the same mistakes again. That is what we call wisdom. It’s not absence of mistakes but the ability to learn from them and the drive to avoid repeating them. That will lead to a life well lived. That will eventually lead to your personal highlights reel being much longer than your lowlights reel.

It’s Tuesday so we’ll talk tonight.

Love,

Dad.