How to lose while winning

     Once a man hired a locksmith.
    “I’m leaving on vacation and want to be sure everything will still be here when I get back.  I have a lot of valuables inside.  My whole life’s story is in there.”
     “No problem chief.  This job will take me an hour, hour and a half tops. Fifty bucks.”
     This seemed a little cheap to the man, well below the other bids but there was no else available to do the job on such short notice.  Plus he had been called fly-by-night, sleep by day and vacation a lot in between by those who knew him.  But the locksmith seemed affable enough.  So the man took the deal, called it bargain and hoped for the best, even though he felt a little put off by the man’s cocky attitude.  After all, how hard a job could it be?
     “OK, deal.  I put my home into your care.”
     Two weeks later when he came back home and pulled up into the driveway he found what was left of his house razed to the ground.  Random looters were still picking over the few remains of his valuables left for the scrounging.
     He called the locksmith and when he arrived, asked him, “What the hell happened here?”
     “Well chief, I had a little problem.  Not my fault.  No choice but to do it exactly the way I did it.  Just didn’t turn out well is all.  Nobody’s fault.”
     “You had no choice but to destroy my house?  How could all the bad choices in the world have added up to this?  I just wanted you to fix the lock.”
     “Well see, I started to put in the new lock and found it didn’t quite synch up with the old hole in the jamb.  So I had to rejigger it a bit.  No choice there, chief.”
     “What?  You couldn’t just redrill the hole and move it a fraction of an inch?  Or rehang the hinge or plane the door down to size?”
     “Nah, I’m a pure perfectionist, chief.  And I’m not afraid to think big and take risks. So rather than mess with a new set of holes or hinges I decided to move the house.”
    “You had to move the house to fit the door, rather than move the door to fit the house?”
     “Yeah something like that, chief?” 
    “You expect me to believe that you decided to move the immovable object and build it around the thing with no structure to it?”
    “Yep.  Had no choice but to do it that way.  Had to raise the house a quarter inch or so.  Say did you realize that those large beams on either side of the door frame were load bearing?  They’re tied into the ceiling joists.  Who knew?  So when I cut those supports out well hell the whole second story of your house tended to want to fall down into the first floor.  Who knew that would happen?  Man could’ve knocked me over with a pipe wrench on that one.  But like I say, not my fault, chief.  Honest mistake there.  In my opinion the second floor shouldn’t be dependent on the first floor for support in the first place.”
     “In your opinion?  How about the opinion of everybody else in the world?  How about the facts, building codes, blueprints?”
     “Don’t believe in listening to anyone else.  Haven’t got the time, you know, man in a hurry and all that.  Follow my gut, you know?  Facts get in the way of the delicate balance of my entrails and interfere with my natural gutter instincts.  As for blueprints, don’t understand them, don’t read them, haven’t got the time.”
     “So you destroyed my house, because you didn’t have time not to?”
     “Well no not so, not at all, listen, sport, some might think that, you know, looking on this rubble here, that your house was destroyed, like that was a negative thing.  But me, I look on this as progress.  I see an opportunity.  You say de-stroyed.  I say, let’s re-story it.  See what I did there?  I turned the nagative into a positive, the frown into a smile.  Here try it.  Turn that frown upside down.”
    “Huh?”  
    “Sure.  Can’t build a new city on the hill till you’ve razed the old one in the valley.  Can’t get to paradise till you’ve gone through hell and back first.”
     “But I just wanted you to fix my lock.  I ask why my house is in ruins and you give me stupid aphorisms you don’t understand and don’t even make any sense.  Who in the world says you’ve got to go through hell to get to heaven but a lunatic? The whole theory of getting my lock fixed is in having something valuable left to protect.  Going through hell wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with it.”
     “Too late for that I’d say, chief.  No reason to fix a lock when your house’s gone.  Even a child oughta be able to see that, chief.”
     The man had no insurance (particularly since he had hired the man and stupidly signed a waiver) and the locksmith had no money so even a lawsuit would not stand to recompense the man, especially as the local magistrate who would hear the case happened to be the locksmith’s godfather.  Since the locksmith swore on a stack of 2x4’s he would fix it and put it back right the way it was and since it was his responsibility to do so, the owner could only cuss him out and insist he do it immediately.
     “No problem, chief.  Couple of months, tops. It’ll be back like new, no, better than new.  Only cost you a couple hundred thousand or so.”  With that the locksmith got in his truck and drove away before the home owner could find something to hit him with.

     Months go by, then years, excuses pile onto excuses and then mount to an art form of inactivity.  The man has long since given up on the locksmith.  He finally tried to sue him and have arrested, even all to no avail.  He found out the sheriff was the locksmith’s cousin, the mayor his uncle.  Everything he tried to receive some restitution had failed.  By this time, he had rented the house he was in for such a long time, though of course it was no where near as nice as the one he used to have, that he was thinking about buying it.      
    Then he got a call.
    “Hey chief, good news dog, all done.  Mission accomplished.  I know I told you before that there’d be no problem and there was a little one but it wasn’t my fault.  You’ve just got to learn to trust people, chief.  Have a little vision.  Come on by and I’ll show you what I mean.  I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, no, check that, flat out amazed man, at what I’ve been able to do for you here.”
     The impoverished man goes to the site of his former house with a heart heavy with trepidation.  When he arrives he sees about what he expected to see.  Even expecting nothing he is disappointed.  There was no new house in sight, just the pathetic old ruins, dozed around off to one side or the other.  He bites his tongue as he comes up to the fast talking locksmith, who grins at him, all good cheer and bonhomie.
     “Why so glum, chum?  Here right this way, good sir, you chief of little faith you.  I think you are going to be blown away at what I’ve accomplished here.  Oops, watch it, watch your step, there are a lot of nails and broken glass around here.”   
     The trashy area they were walking through used to be his fine garden.  As he walks through the remaining rubble of what used to be his home he can only see the hundreds of thousands of dollars he had lost over and above the initial costs of the home and all his costs since to rent another house since.  All since that bitter day he had hired the no-nothing, blithering idiot who was walking ahead of him, jabbering about some irrelevancy or other.  The man just couldn’t believe the waste, the loss of possessions and memories that seeing this place again brought back to him in a flood.
     He almost wanted to cry at the folly and stupidity of it all and the cheerful man he was following only made it worse.  Either he was oblivious to all the destruction around them or else he was so congenitally dumb and disreputable, as he pretended not to notice the destruction he’d caused, which he never acknowledged, that he didn’t even comprehend what competence and accountability were.  All these years and the poor man still didn’t know what to believe about this fool locksmith.  Was he an idiot savant with such an extreme emphasis on the idiot that it eclipsed the savant, or a crook or just a simpleton?      
    He was so far beyond the point of anger that he had moved on to the fall back position of all great failures in life, to a congenial acceptance of the simple tragedy of all human things.  This was the only explanation he had left to fathom why things had gone this phenomenally wrong for no good reason.  He is roused from his morbidity by the locksmith’s chirpy voice.
     “See, here we are.  Here it is.  Didn’t I tell you.  Surprise!”
     “See what?”  The man was baffled.  They were standing before a tiny ten by eight shed, like a lean-to, a rough, ramshackle contraption that wouldn’t house a hobbit properly.
“What are you talking about?  All I see is an outhouse.  My house is still gone.”
     “Chief, chief, chief!  You’ve got to stop living in the past.  You can’t be afraid to dream.  You have to embrace victory and accept success when you see it right in front of you revealed in all its glory.”
     “See what, what?  You mean you expect me to live here?  What the hell are you talking about, man?”
     “Chief, you’ve got to quit whining, buddy, it’s bad for your digestion.  Here take this key and I’ll show you what I mean.  See how shiny and new it is?  I guarantee you’re going to be embarrassed for having ever doubted me.  Now, here, just open the door like I tell you to and you’ll see what I’m talking about.  Trust me, chief.”
     Numb and confused, the man takes the key and unlocks the door to the little tool shed.  By this time he has no idea what to expect inside.  He pushed open the door and as the light floods in through the many cracks between the amateurishly misaligned boards, it exposes a tiny little empty room inside.  Not knowing whether this is a bad joke or a cruel torture he looks puzzled to the face of the locksmith for explanation.
     The locksmith is beaming, satisfied, like a proud parent.  “See?”
    “See what?  There’s nothing in here.  All I can inside is emptiness, nothingness, a perfect reflection inside of all I have left of my life outside.”
    “No, no, not that, chief.  Did you notice how well the key fit in the lock and how easily and freely the door swung open on its hinges without even a creak or squeek?   Now that’s what I call some serious locksmithing, chief.  And to think all this time you had doubts.  Admit it you did.  I told you I’d get this all put right for you and I always do what I say.”  
The locksmith proclaimed this with considerable smug satisfaction, folding his arms across his chest and smiling broadly and proudly.
     “But what about my house, it’s still gone?”
     “Your house?  Ah, but that’s not my job.  What are you delusional?  I’m a locksmith.  You hired me to give you a new lock and I have.  Job done.  Get real, chief, I’m no miracle worker or master builder.  I don’t have a magic wand.”
     “Yeah but you fixed the lock when there is no building left to lock on a door there’s no need to go through to protect valuables that no longer exist.”
     “So?  I did what I said I’d do, I can’t account for the rest.”
     This was it for the demoralized man.  Disgusted he turns to leave and, having nothing more to say, begins to walk away.
     “Hey what about my money, chief?  You owe me fifty dollars.  Or at least I think I originally said fifty, but some unexpected costs arose along the way so, I’d have to say, you really owe me quite a bit more…  But hey, where you going?  Well, how about one-fifty?  That’s a start.  One hundred and fifty and we’ll call it square.”
     Undeterred, the man continues to walk away.
     “Well, will you at least recommend me to your friends?  Chief?  Chief?”

     Moral: Never expect the mind of a human to exceed its own horizons.  The limit of an imagination is a barricade that may be invisible to the eye but is a as solid as stone to the one trapped on the other side of it trying to look out.  Most people pass their lives deep behind these fortress walls of their own making, causing harm, casting blame wildly and accepting responsibility for nothing.
     In other words, if you hire the wrong man for a job don’t expect good results to follow.