August 5, 2013, by Todd Neva
“Daddy, draw me a truck,” Isaac said as he plopped his book How to Draw Things That Go on the table.
Holding a pen between my middle and ring fingers, I drew a pickup truck. Even though the lines were squiggly, looking like the work of a child, Isaac affirmed me, “Great job, Daddy. I will color it blue, like your truck.”
After a few crayon scribbles on the fender, he slid the paper and crayon over to me and said, “Color it, Daddy.”
I colored it, with a few scribbles outside of the lines, but not completely before my hand got too tired.
“Great job, Daddy, you did really good.”
What kid delegates his coloring?
Recently, my cousin Greg and nephew Adam visited us. I put them to work as I often do when I have visitors. I would do the work myself, but my hands don’t work. I have weeks to think about a project before having a willing visitor, and then with the project clearly mapped out in my mind, I hover over him and direct the work.
We used my father-in-law’s backhoe on a few projects around the property—knocking a hole through the rock wall to allow for drainage, digging the topsoil out from the future site of a shed, and removing old stumps from harvested Christmas trees.
On the last project, I directed Greg’s backhoe work from my lawnmower with Isaac standing in front of me. Greg positioned the backhoe in front of a stump and started to move the boom into position.
Isaac yelled out, “You need to come this way a little bit.”
“Son, you have a future in middle-management.”
Later, I told Greg, “You had two foremen and one of them is three. I’ve never seen a three-year-old delegate work. He even delegates his coloring to me. What three-year-old would rather tell somebody to color than color himself?”
“A three-year-old who wants to be like his daddy,” Greg said.
