The Power of Lazy
Read Time: 6 minutes
It was a warm day, the kind where the wind whipped dust clouds off parched gravel roads and bare fields. Fallen leaves were getting tossed around on city streets. Despite the wind, the smell of harvest hung thick in the air, and the rhythm of combines cutting wheat, barley, and canola hummed in the countryside. Geese were congregating in fields and parks, terrorizing anyone who strayed too close. I was waiting at the end of our driveway for the school bus to pick me up, my long frizzy hair swishing in the gusts over my jean jacket. When the bus finally rolled up the gravel road, it arrived with a cloud of dust that got into my nose, mouth, and eyes. Another first day back to school off to a good start.
First days were always the worst. This was a new school, and I felt lost and didn’t know anyone. It was the biggest school I’d ever been to — and honestly, the most amazing. I was there for three years, and the number of classes I skipped during that time was legendary. I was so good at forging my dad’s signature on sick notes that it became my regular signature to this day. It was a vocational school with a great carpentry program, and the carpentry shop was loaded with all the tools a woodworker could dream of. So naturally, I signed up for Autobody and graduated from it three years later. I had a thing for old cars, and they taught us in metric. Carpentry was in inches and feet; I wasn’t learning that backwards stuff.
After a few days of settling into the routine, our autobody teacher, Mr. Smith, had us standing in the shop while he explained how dangerous everything could get. He wasn’t wrong — he was a smart guy. His lecture kept rolling along until he suddenly stopped and looked at us. “Who here is lazy?” he asked. We stood in silence. “None of you? Really? That’s too bad,” he said with disappointment. “I’m lazy. I was hoping some of you were too. That’s disappointing.” We could feel the pride in his voice and instantly regretted our silence. But we were confused.
“You guys like working hard then? If you’re not lazy, I can expect you to be working all the time, right?” he said, again with that strange pride. The class agreed with grunts and nods. Mr. Smith furrowed his bushy eyebrows and pushed his glasses up.
“You guys agreed to something you don’t understand. I’m lazy, and I want you all to be just as lazy — but none of you asked why before agreeing to work hard.” His stance was confident, and we were leaning into every word.
“You assume lazy is bad, but it’s obvious that’s not the case here, is it?” He paused again, letting the idea settle. “Lazy workers are smart. They do the job right the first time. Hard workers get it right the second or third time. So I’ll ask again: who here is lazy?”
This time we were much more animated in our grunts and nods. The message landed. Mr. Smith smiled — we must have had that ah‑ha look on our faces. “Lazy doesn’t mean sitting around,” he said. “It means not cutting corners and regretting it later. Fixing what you’ve done wrong is harder than most repairs — it’s just wasted time.”
The energy in the room felt lighter, as if we understood each other a little more. A few minutes later the bell rang, and we moved on to math or English — whatever our schedules said. I had science as my last class of the day. I skipped.
That was 1988, and I can’t stop myself from thinking that it was a long time ago. I’m not doing the math to put a number to the age of that memory. But it never left me, and I’ve always considered myself a lazy guy thanks to Mr. Smith.
As for learning inches and feet, I did eventually — even though it’s all messy and not metric. That frizzy long ’80s hair is long gone, and my signature has been perfected. Dad asked about it once. He wasn’t impressed.
Step inside Behind the Grain, if you’d like to sit awhile.
