Sometimes It’s The Smallest Things That Cause The Biggest Problems
For some of you that know me well, you will probably find this story “inconceivable” as one of the characters from “The Princess Bride” kept repeating to Andre the Giant!
This past Sunday I set out to start pressure washing our brick sidewalk as a part of the preparations for our annual Memorial Day party. Connected all the hoses, started the motor and no water came out. Hmmmm. After very meticulously connecting and reconnecting all the possible combinations of water hose, pressure washer hose, the parts of the pressure washer hose, I finally isolated the problem to the nozzle.
I tried to take the nozzle off, and it would not budge. My wife Karen, called the Ace Hardware store, sure that the problem was me. Albert talked her through the diagnostic process and he described the exact process I had gone through. I got on the phone with Albert and he said one more thing, “Take a coat hanger and ram it down the metal tube of the last section, that should fix it!”
I did what Albert said to do. I rammed it with a coat hanger multiple times but that did not solve my problem. Then an idea popped into my head, inspired by Albert’s “metal probe ramming method”, I jammed a paper clip in the tip of the nozzle. I then poured water into the metal tube, and voila, water came out the other end! Never once did I see gravel or dirt or a stick or anything hard and immovable that would appear to be big and strong enough to stop water blasting at thousands of pounds per square inch.
I re-connected all the tubes and now the pressure washer was blasting water and the algae was flying off my bricks!
The problem was not the engine or hoses or tubing or parts. In fact, I never could find or see or hold the problem. The “problem” was so small I never saw it or found out what it was. Yet it was “big” enough to stop a thousands of pound per square inch pressure washer from emitting any water.
I spent an hour last Sunday trying to solve my problem. My ultimate victory was based on two key factors. Asking an expert for help, and persistence. How many of us do that? Whether the problem is personal, professional, relationships, business/sales, athletic, doesn’t matter. If you try to solve your problem and cannot, stop! Pick up the phone, hit the internet, call a friend, do something to get some outside help. Then, once you get that outside help, DO WHAT THEY SAY TO DO! Don’t ignore them. Try their suggestions and keep trying. And then maybe you will improvise on something that neither you nor the expert suggested. Albert had not suggested a paperclip, but suddenly the idea popped into my head and I think that was what dislodged my microscopic problem.
So whether your problems are huge, or so small you cannot even find it….Ask for some help from an expert, do what they say, and be persistent with your efforts. Otherwise, you’ll be slipping and sliding on your slick brick sidewalk all summer!