This afternoon I helped Mary fold some bed sheets. She insists that all the corners and edges be matched evenly. I don't know why since no one will ever see them in the cupboard except her and me, and I surely don't care if they don't match up. When we put them on the bed, it won't make any difference. Well, being even is important to her so I go along with it.

At least she doesn't iron the sheets. My mother always ironed her sheets. In fact, as I recall, she ironed almost everything. She would moisten everything and wrap it in a sheet and put it in the refrigerator until it was time to iron. That's another story for another time. Just as it was important for Mary to have everything folded neatly, it was important to my mother to have everything very smooth and without wrinkles. In our society, it seems to be important that even our faces are free from wrinkles. Everything must be flat.

There was a time when most people thought the earth was flat. I guess it was up to Ferdinand Magellan to prove the earth was round. When I was in high school, we studied plane geometry. That assumed that the surface of the earth was a plane. It wasn't until I was in college that I learned of spherical geometry, which assumes that the earth is a globe. Now Thomas L. Friedman writes a book entitled, "The World is Flat." I guess we have come full circle, no pun intended. I know that Mr. Friedman was not talking about the surface of the earth. What he means by that title is that because of modern technology and communication systems, we are now all on the same level and have access to the same information.

That Infamous Ruler

That takes us to straight. My dad was a carpenter, par excellence. It was important to him that all saw cuts must be straight, and that all vertical surfaces must be plumb. When he sketched a plan, even for a small project, he used a 3-sided ruler with which he could plan everything to scale. I can still hear that ruler hitting the table as he flipped it from one side to the other. Even though I still have that ruler (see photo), when I am drawing a small plan to make something, I usually draw it free-hand and things are not to scale. It is good enough for me to simply mark the dimensions on the drawing.

However, when I had a garden, I would put up a string on stakes to make the rows straight. Later my friend Sam started sharing a garden with me. He didn't think it was necessary to make the rows straight. In fact, he told me that his father always said, "If the row is crooked, it is longer and you can plant more in it." I guess he was right, because in geometry we learned that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points.

If you saw my office, you would know that it is not important to me to have things lined up evenly. The junk in my work space shows that it is not necessary for everything to be flat, and I always intend to "straighten up" my office, but it seldom happens. I'm not sure why I wrote this little essay, but I couldn't think of anything more important today to write about. So, I leave you with this advice: Even though your tires go flat, steer a straight line. I don't even know what that means. Maybe next week I will think of something more important to write about.