Not that I do all that many home projects anymore, but the old rule comes up in so many other areas of life.
Measure twice. Cut once.
This should be true with all things. Checking the details, making sure everything is correct, crossing those t’s and dotting our cute little i’s. Yes, ensuring that measurement is right, before we make that irretrievable cut.
But measuring can be tricky in life. And in measuring itself.
Take barrels for instance. If you use “barrel” as a measurement, it changes depending on what’s in the barrel.
Beer? A barrel of suds is 31.5 gallons. But if oil is in that barrel, the measurement is exactly 42 gallons. And then Congress deemed that the measurement for dry goods should be 105 dry quarts. They decided this back in 1915.
Like I said. Measuring can be tricky. You would think it would be the most straightforward proposal in the world. But, if your recipe calls for a “dash” of something, the measurement can fall in a wide range. We are talking between 1/16 and 1/8 of a teaspoon.
And don’t even pinch me. That’s half of a dash.
But don’t stop there. When someone says, “Oh, it just has a smidgen of salt.” Take them seriously. A smidgen is half a pinch. Depending on how you start out with a dash, that smidgen could land anywhere from 1/32 to 1/64 of a teaspoon.
Measure twice. Cut once. Before you throw it in the soup.
Here’s another thing that surprised me. I have been around a while on this blue ball. And all these years, when I’ve taken one for my slice of bread, I thought it was a “pad” of butter. The article on measurements I’ve recently read calls them “pats.” Oh silly me. A “pat” of butter. And it too has a specific measurement. Butter is packaged at 48 pats per pound, which means that each pat is 1/3 of an ounce or 1 tablespoon.
We are getting personal now. With all this patting, and pinching.
What I’ve really come to notice about all of this, is that people like to keep track of their stuff. If a person has something, they want to know how much they have of that thing. There are units of measurement for everything under the sun.
A Drop is 1/480 of a fluid ounce. Ask a pharmacist.
A half-million Twitter followers is a Wheaton. Don’t ask me.
A Span is 9 inches. Spanning the globe. Nine inches at a time.
A Hand is 4 inches, these days. It was mostly used for measuring horse height. Pretty self-explanatory. It’s the width of your hand with the fingers closed. But these days, it just means 4 inches no matter how gigantic — or small — your hands are.
And if you are a drinker, the finger is still the width of your finger. So if the bartender is supposed to pour a two-finger shot, check their hands. Although, our good friend Noah Webster decided to give it a formal 3/4 of an inch.
But wait. If you are drinking and sewing at the same time? A finger is 4.5 inches of cloth. So, if you’ve had a lot of fingers of bourbon, don’t confuse them with the bolt of plaid flannel lying there.
Apples are my big treat. The sweeter, the better. I could eat a dozen apples a day. I probably do. But to measure them? I’m in the dark. The USDA has assigned individual bushel measurements to different things. A bushel of corn is 56 pounds, while a bushel of oats is 32 pounds. There doesn’t seem to be any hard, cold numbers on apples.
I’m getting long here. Taking up too much of your time. And we measure that too.
The Jiffy is about 10 milliseconds. (In computer engineering.) And.
A Shake is 10 nanoseconds. (In nuclear reactions.). If you time it out, 10 nanoseconds is exactly 10 billionths of a second. Quick, quick.
When it comes right down to it, some things just don’t measure up.
But I’ll always try to follow that advice about measuring twice and cutting once. I’ve learned my lesson there a few times, I’ll tell you. And that’s the best we can do. In small measures.
We learn our lessons.
And the next time, we make sure our measurements are closer than a smidgen.
So we don’t end up in a pinch.
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“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
― Malcolm Forbes
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My measure of success is whether I’m fulfilling my mission.
— Robert Kiyosaki
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“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
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