Last year was my first year home from grad school and I begged Wesley to teach me how to run his swather. Its self propelled and I grew up on a hydra-swing machine, which is similar to comparing apples and oranges. Plus, like every machine it has its little 'quirks' and you must hold your tongue just right when running it or everything will run amok in the blink of an eye.
It was one of the best pre-marriage testers of all time. Wesley took me out to a field, mumbled through the directions and walked to the pickup on the edge of the field to leave. I distinctly remember two phrases from that afternoon as he got ready to leave.
"This is probably the worst field we own. Bumpy, rocky...I probably shouldn't have you start out on this one."
and, most importantly...
"Make sure you don't break anything."
Needless to say, within 20 minutes I had completely torn apart the header and we had to get a new one. Yes, that's right, I tore it up past the rebuilding stage even. After his initial anger had subsided, Wes admitted that the header was about to break, he just had hoped he could limp it along a few more weeks.
I try to find the silver lining in situations and now feel that I just helped speed up the updating of equipment.
Yesterday I got to run the swather again. Everything went smoothly, and knock on wood, it'll continue to go that way the rest of the season (of course everyone knows it won't). Just in case though, I took some backup in case I did break something and Wes felt compelled to 'air his frustrations'.
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Just like mama said... If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.