I saw an interview with the great NBA center Patrick Ewing where he said Larry Bird was the greatest trash talker of all times. He also said the difference with Bird, though, was he backed it up. I’ve heard stories where he told a defender precisely what he would do, and then he did it. I don’t know if this is arrogance or confidence, but I wouldn’t call it trash talking if it turned out to be accurate.
That interview reminded me of a time when my grandfather, Howard Chaffin, said something along these lines: “If there’s a man who can lay out a better row than me, I ain’t met him.” Now I only have a vague idea of what he actually meant. I know he was talking about a row of some crop in his field, but I don’t know if he meant it was perfectly straight or what criteria a person might use to grade a row. I thought to myself, “What difference does it really make?”
I also heard my father making similar statements about things that didn’t seem particularly important to me. In my younger years, my father was an Atlanta Police Officer. For someone growing up today, a police officer without his gun belt might not look much different from someone heading to the golf course. That was not true in the 1960s. His uniform was more like a military dress uniform that had to be assembled. My father was meticulous about it, and he never left the house without his shoes shined and his uniform perfect. I don’t know that it made much difference in the grand scheme of things, but there was a sense that there was value in doing things perfectly.
Once I had children of my own, I caught myself saying the same types of things about trivial tasks. I don’t know if it’s genetics or learned, but there is a benefit beyond the seeming silliness of it. In order to be able to say what you are doing is excellent, you will do it to the best of your ability. As Vince Lombardi said, “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”
But from a higher authority, there is an even better reason to reach for greatness: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” Colossians 3:23-24 (NIV)
I could not judge Papa’s rows or appreciate them, but they didn’t go unnoticed…and the work ethic that went into them continues to trickle down through the generations.