WordsForLife - Page: 12 of 18

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED...

I Never MaDe Mistaeks!

“A time to weep and a time to laugh” Ecclesiastes 3:4 NAS

Have you made mistakes? Not me! Have you been able to easily admit it? Definitely not me! Until a few
years ago I couldn’t admit, even to myself, that I had made a mistake. If something went wrong anywhere,
I’d quickly blame it on anyone, or anything. I wouldn’t consider it could have been my fault. Talk about a
snob and a nut!

Maybe Jesus’ words “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”(Matt. 5:48)
impacted me the wrong way. Maybe I was too insecure and afraid of looking bad. Who knows?

Then one day a funny thing happened on my new job. I was new and in training as a teller in a bank. This
was back in the early 1980s when teller machines were large clunky computers. Every time information was
entered incorrectly the machine would go DING! DING! DING! Everyone in the small bank could hear that
a teller had made a mistake.

Well, needless to say, I was totally terrified of that. The experienced tellers rarely caused a DING! I
panicked when I did. As a result, I went extremely slow, carefully posting entries. The first time I caused
that bellowing DING! DING! DING! I was totally humiliated. It echoed through the building. As soon as
that customer left, I retreated to my desk to do paperwork. I decided to let the experienced tellers wait on
the customers.

Then our manager, who began as a teller, came to post some things on my machine. He’d not been there
two minutes and suddenly the DING! DING! DING! resounded everywhere. No one seemed to notice. The
boss just cleared the entry and tried again. Again DING! DING! DING! With a casual attitude, he cleared
the keys and tried a few more times until he got the entry made correctly.

What was funny was no one seemed to care. The other three tellers were just doing what they needed to be
doing, ignoring the boss making his entries. Customers came and went, and no one paid any attention to the
dinging.

Then I realized my fear of making mistakes must be silly. Maybe it’s OK for me to make mistakes. After all,
if that sharp, experienced young manager doesn’t seem to concerned about lots of Dings! and others don’t
why should I? The next customer got my services. It was amazing how quiet those dings were after that. I
became comfortable admitting mistakes in all areas and found it could be a good avenue to bring laughter.
That certainly makes me feel better and keeps things in perspective. Now I say “Oooops” a lot, with a smile.

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