Fucking up a measurement really takes the wind out of your sails. The other day I was up on a ladder and yelled down to Pat, "twenty-six and a quarter," so he could make the appropriate cut. Pat brought the piece up, and it didn't fit. We weren't fussing over quarters or eighths; this piece was inches off. Pat looked at me with a look that said, "you fucked up the measurement," but I looked at him back with a look that said, "yeah right, you fucked up the cut." One of us fucked up, so I climbed up the ladder to clear my name, but when I looked at the tape again (this time right-side-up) it read: twenty-NINE and one quarter inches. My brain couldn't invert what looked like a six into a nine.
We cast aside the now unusable piece--a souvenir for my inaccuracy. It would be nice to just put things like that behind you, but you can't. They get put down in an unspoken record, the sum of which makes up your competence as a builder. If you get too many such mistakes, then don't expect people to make your cuts for you.
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