If it’s true that it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert at something, then I’m confident I’ve clocked enough hours to be considered a professional failure artist. My wife and kids have witnessed most of my missteps.
Some failures were trivial, while others nearly cost me my life—like on the fateful day I was stacking metal horse stalls during my shift at the rodeo arena. I nearly met my gruesome end after somehow pinning myself between a stack of disassembled panels and the 3,500-pound dinosaur of a forklift I hadn’t learned to respect.
Some failures were not as dangerous. For example, I’ve put my foot in my mouth so many times that I think I’ve acquired a taste for it. Once I told my wife in a heated discussion not to yell because it was—and I quote—“not becoming” of her. (And here I’d thought that telling my wife to calm down was the worst line I could pull from my bag of word tricks.)
Still, I’m thankful for many of my failures. Because my kids have gotten to see me fall on my face—and then get back up, learning from each misadventure. I want them to see that failure was…
