The Peg used to smile as she watched me work, and call me picayunish. I took it as a compliment, which is how it seemed she meant it at the time. Having outgrown the desire to get something done in a hurry, by the time I was out of grammar school I just wanted to do things right. I make functional things, and if they aren’t done right I don’t want to use them. That means I just have to look at my goof-ups over and over again, and I don’t really care to do that. Therefore, since it’s silly to swap my time for something useless, it only made sense to slow down and, you know, be picayunish.
“You’re picayunish,” The Peg would smile in my direction, and I’d beam with pride.
In junior high we had picayune as a vocabulary word. It means “of little value or importance; petty.” I still took it as a compliment, because (in my mind) I didn’t think many people would tend to the smallest of details, nor would many be aware that a whole project could become spoiled with just a few misplaced stitches or a crooked line. Besides, The Peg was always smiling when she called me picayunish. That made it a good thing.
In high school, when I heard there was a newspaper published in New Orleans called The Times-Picayune, I took it to mean that their reporters would ferret out the most integral details of a story so that the reader would be able to form his or her own opinion. As it turns out, they named it after a low-value Spanish coin once used in the South, only one of which was required to purchase a copy of the newspaper.
None of this clarifying information makes any difference to me. I stick with my first impression of just about anything, a condition I call Preconceived Notion Sickness. I proudly point out the “smallest of picayune details” in my work, giving each my full review as every project progresses. I love being picayunish.
A Preconceived Notion Sickness event took place when I was running a bath at The Dot’s this summer. It seemed to take forever to get the water to warm up, so I was forced to wake The Dot and asked if I had to run the “hot” for a long time before it complied. She mumbled something angry that sounded like a cross between “I’m sleeping!” and “Yes!”, so I returned to the bathroom. That water never did get warm, and I had to take a cold bath. I washed my hair, too, which made a mighty uncomfy start to the day.
When she became fully conscious, The Dot told me I had the handle pointed to “cold”. Oh. I was pointing the rounded top of the handle/dial to “hot” instead of the handle itself. I thought that was the way it worked. It never occurred to me that I could have been wrong, opting instead for the only logical explanation: “We’re out of hot water.” As I said, I took a cold bath. And washed my hair. In cold water.You trying being me for awhile. It’s not as easy as I make it look.
I can hold on for years, accepting erroneous “truths”. I still hem “backwards”, because that’s the way it looked to me when I watched The Peg do it. The garment gets hemmed, and since that was the starting goal, it works for me.
I have rewritten countless song lyrics from my youth. You probably remember the popular, Hey, Say Louise! by the Beatles. It goes, “Hey, say Louise! I luh-uh-uh-uh-uhve you! Hey, say Louise, is not enough to show I care!” I’m told some people call it Eight Days a Week. Whatever.
In time, Webster will see it my way, and I have no doubt we’ll see the amended definitions for “picayune” and “picayunish”. They will read:
Pic·a·yune (pĭk'ee-yūn') adj. Precisely and proficiently done. Something made with skill and expertise.
Picayunish (pĭk ee ·yūn'ish) adj. Taking great care and concern to see that something is done just right, and of a quality to endure and be admired for generations.
Time for me to go now. I have to pull the shades up. It’s cloudy today, and I want my houseplants to get some indirect sunlight…
Copyright © Kari E.O. Burns August 2006
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