“Lefty Loosey” And Perspective Power

Brian Christiansen wrote:

Last weekend I bought two bikes to donate to needy kids in the Appalachian Mountains.  I took my son to Toys R Us to get the bikes. I decided to save the $20 and assemble the bikes myself instead of having it done at the store.

While assembling the first bike, I noticed how "idiot proof" the assembly of a commodity bicycle from Toys R Us is.  Everything is labeled. In particular, there’s a big red "R" on the right bicycle pedal for the right hand side, and a big "L" on the left.

The right pedal twisted on perfectly on the right side.  However, the threads on the left side refused to "take".  I literally spent 10 minutes trying to twist the left pedal onto the crank of the bike.  I was so frustrated I stopped working on the pedal and finished the rest of the assembly, that way when I brought it back to Toys R Us as defective they’d give me one of their assembled bikes in exchange and I wouldn’t have to do it again.

During this time, my son was playing outside.  He had offered to help me about 17 times and I had him throw away packaging, kick down the kickstand, putting on the pads, etc. By the time I was putting the pedals on and struggling my son had moved on to other tasks since I was IN NO MOOD to talk much.

He came up to me and asked, "sure I can’t help?"…I paused for a moment, and decided, "what the heck"….I asked my son Connor to put the left pedal on.  I imagined he’d stay quite occupied and "out of my hair" while I started on the second bike.

The great thing about kids is they have less assumptions than we do.  It took Connor about 12 seconds to get the pedal on.  You see, when he couldn’t get the pedal to screw in by following, "righty tighty" (i.e., screwing clockwise), he simply tried the other direction, or "lefty loosey". The pedal twisted in like butter.  The commodity bicycle makers go so far to ensure the pedals are on the correct side that they reversed the threads for the left pedal… amazing…

I’d like to think my Bedwell training of stepping back and taking a fresh perspective was the reason I asked my son to take a crack at it.  I know that part of me was just trying to get him out of my hair.  But the sheer joy on my 7 year olds face that he helped his Dad do something he couldn’t do was priceless and solidified my commitment to looking at things from a "counterintuitive" perspective.