On Calf Licking and Quality Assurance

I suppose we all reach a point in our lives where we suddenly have an appreciation for things our parents said to us while we were growing up.

Now I don't mean those things like "close the refrigerator door, we're not cooling the whole neighborhood," or  "don't make me stop this car."  Nor do I mean that comment that got immediate action like when my Mama would tell me to"come in now and let me whip you or wait til your Daddy gets home and I'll let him take care of you."

I mean those things that you hear many times over and thought were so stupid but then at some point, usually a lot later, you suddenly realize the wisdom of the statement.

My favorite of these that my mother was fond of saying is "you'd better lick that calf over. "

Now I claim absolutely no expertise in things bovine other than that relating to the glass of milk I have every morning with my breakfast but as I understand it, the first thing a mother cow does when she delivers a calf is to start licking it.

This serves several purposes.  First, it cleans the calf of the residue of the birth and it bonds the mother to the calf, making sure she knows which calf is hers.  Otherwise she would reject it and wouldn't allow it to nurse.  In fact, this step is so important that farmers and ranchers may cover the calf in grain to help insure the cow continues to lick the calf until the identification and bonding takes place.

Mama's admonition to "lick that calf over" was her way of saying the job I did was insufficient and that a "redo" was in order. Although I knew at the time what she meant and carried out her instructions, I didn't understand the need to do it right the first time.  I only knew I needed to do the job quickly so I could go play or do something I wanted to do, not what she would be inspecting!  Besides, it was a hokey expression and I didn't care anything about cows or calves!

I would later spend almost four years in the Navy working on aircraft.  As a structural mechanic I would be called on to make repairs to components that make up the body of the aircraft, everything from changing the tires to repairing control surfaces.  For every repair I made, I signed a work order indicating what I had done, what parts I used and that the job was complete.  Every repair had to be countersigned by a supervisor and a quality control inspector.  The lives of the flight crew and the completion of their mission were that important.

I would later spend 34 years in hospitals where quality monitoring, measuring and improvement was a constant emphasis of everyone involved.  The licensing and accrediting agencies made sure that hospitals developed programs addressing quality in every aspect of the operation. From cleaning of the floors to the details of patient care, all aspects were covered by the quality programs. Again, peoples' lives depended on the healthcare team getting the job done right.

Over my years in hospitals, the name of the programs designed to insure proper and improving care changed every three to five years.  We had quality assurance, quality improvement, quality management, and others including process improvement.  My mother never worked in healthcare other than that involved in trying to keep her 8 children reasonably healthy on limited resources, so she would never have used the terms above.  She would have said "do it right the first time" or "lick that calf over."  The many fine people I worked with over the years with titles like Director of Quality Assurance or Manager of Process Improvement would never had cottoned to being called the Director of Calf Licking but it's all the same.  Mama just said it the best way she knew.

As much as I now appreciate my mother's lesson and know the importance of doing a job right the first time, I also feel at times like her words are a curse.  I don't call myself a perfectionist but I derive a certain satisfaction when I know I've done something correctly or have done it well.  And then there those times when I've failed that Mama's words ring in my ears: "you better lick that calf over."

Most readers will know that I am a serious hobby woodworker. The last two furniture projects I have made, I have completed only to become dissatisfied with the finish I applied.  Correcting this requires that I remove the finish, either with chemicals or laborious sanding.

In fact, I'm in the middle of removing the finish on my latest project, spending many hours correcting my work.  It's tedious, messy and very time consuming.  I think I'd rather lick a calf, literally!

Thanks, Mama!