Dealing with the fudge factor

  • Published
  • By Lt. Col. Mark Murphy
  • 354th Maintenance Squadron commander
EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska (AFPN) --  “Daddy, can I have a box?”

It was a hot summer day near Chanute Air Force Base, Ill., and I was unpacking from the first of many permanent change of station moves in my career. I turned to answer my five year-old daughter who was looking up at me with big brown eyes.

"What do you need the box for?” I asked.

She replied, “Sherry and Terry’s kitty died and we need a box to bury him in.”

My heart melted. What parent could resist such a touching moment? So I grabbed the nearest box and sent her on her way. Problem solved.

You can imagine my horror when, a few minutes later, I glanced out the window and saw my daughter, her two friends and the box out in the street. They were using sticks to try to pry something off the pavement.

Realizing I’d made an error by not asking a critical question, I ran outside to get the girls out of the street. My daughter quickly pointed out what was keenly obvious: they couldn’t get the cat in the box. I looked down at the biggest Siamese cat I’d ever seen, stuck to the hot Illinois asphalt like a chunk of firewood frozen to the ground in the middle of winter. The girls lovingly called this chunk of roadkill “Fudge.”

Since I grew up on a farm, I’ve got a pretty strong stomach. So I brushed away the flies, kicked Fudge loose, grabbed him by the tail, and tossed him in the box with a thunk. The girls thanked me and headed back to Sherry and Terry’s house. Problem solved.

Or so I thought. No sooner did I have my hands washed when the girls were back at the front door with the box. My daughter explained her friends’ dad wouldn’t let them bury Fudge in their backyard. Could they bury him in ours?

Suddenly what little cuteness that remained was gone.

“Absolutely not!” I told her. “For one thing, I rent this house. For another, I’m not burying another man’s cat in my backyard.”

A little disappointed, the girls left again. Problem solved.

A few minutes later they were back asking for a shovel. “Sorry, I told them, I don’t have a shovel (which was true).” This was a relief because I assumed that if they were looking for a shovel the other dad had changed his mind about burying the cat in his yard. Problem solved.

It didn’t take long to find out I assumed wrong. I looked out the back window and found them in a vacant lot between two houses behind ours, sitting next to the box and scratching in the dirt with teaspoons. The afternoon drew on and, as you can expect, they made little progress. Soon dinner time arrived and the girls all got called home to their respective families, abandoning what little interest they had in Fudge along the way.

After dinner, I looked out the back window. The rays of the setting sun shone on the box sitting in the middle of the vacant lot. I chuckled at the thought of some passerby getting curious and looking in the box. At least it wasn’t my cat.

Then my eye caught something I hadn’t noticed before -- little black marks on the box. I suddenly realized it wasn’t just an ordinary moving box. It was a box I’d used to mail things from Officer Training School.

There, in the vacant lot behind my house, was a cardboard box with a petrified cat inside and my name and address on the outside. At the end of the day, that cat didn’t belong to its owner, the person who hit it or even the girls who tried to bury it. That cat was mine, and suddenly the thought of someone finding it wasn’t so funny anymore.

A magic marker and a trip to a dumpster downtown solved the problem for good. But I’ve thought about that day throughout my career.

If only someone had told me that the dad down the street had no intention of burying that cat. If I’d only noticed my name and address on the box. If only I’d asked more questions.

How many times have you seen someone who made a series of decisions that all seemed perfectly reasonable and valid at the time, but yet things still went horribly wrong? I’ve seen it again and again in safety reports, hospital rooms, courtrooms and commanders’ offices. My experience with Fudge is not unusual. People often get lost in details and lose track of the big picture. Despite the best intentions, the damage is done before they fully realize what they’re dealing with.

When someone gets into a situation, it’s your responsibility to give them a crosscheck and get them to see the forest instead of the trees. It’s also important to watch yourself, look down the road, and focus on where you’re going, not just where you are.

Faced with a challenging situation, it’s human nature to get tunnel vision and be blindsided by something you didn’t anticipate. Watch for this in yourself, and watch for it in your people, because trust me. You don’t want to be stuck with the cat at the end of the day.