What Was I Thinking?

Maintenance, What is it worth?

I had a coffe with Rob this morning and he was telling me how his old Windstar is going to cost him to much to fix. I thought that the only thing I could do for him was to point out that, had he done the proper maintenance, like I had suggested to him several times in the past, he would not be looking at such a big job now! Then I came back to my office and on my book shelf is this box of plastic plugs, they go in the ends of the chairs, you know the type, when you sit in the chair you can't help it, you have to try and pull them out. You can sometimes see the kid's that have learned the technique very well with one black plug on the end of each finger. The chairs that these come from are probably at least twelve years old and most of them are missing their plugs. It suddenly dawned on me this morning that some times we just leave the little things for so long that they one day they show up as a big thing. It takes only a few seconds to replace the plug in each hole. But on every chair there is eight holes and now to do the maintenance is going to take some time. Gets me thinking about how many times I just don't bother to take the time to invest in a friendship that needs maintenance, and how the longer it is left the harder it seems to be to find the time. I wonder if I can remember the speech that I love to give Rob about maintenance when it is my turn to do some.