“We want this to be perfect. We just have to go slow.”
Wisdom is like art. You find the most helpful advice in the oddest places. Recently, I brought two jackets with misbehaving zippers into a leather repair store. That is an understatement, somehow. An underselling of the store. The building is old—the family has been repairing shoes, purses, leather goods for three generations. The man behind the counter was wearing a paint-splattered, tattered apron. His fingers were elegant—long nails, stained skin. The room is cavernous, filled with oddities. Handwritten signs on the wall look as if they’ve been there for decades. Keys glitter on the counter.
When it was my turn, I showed him the two jackets with the demolished zippers. He said, “We’re not qualified. We’re not qualified to replace the zippers.”
The word “zipper” is named for the sound a zipper makes. Ziiiiip.
He inspected the teeth. He slowly stroked the pull tab. “We do not replace zippers,” he said, but he would not let me leave. He bent over the first jacket, showed me the weak spot on the zipper, told me, “He needs to go slow.” (Understanding instinctively that this was not my jacket.) “We have to go slow. This can work. We want this to work for him.”
The zipper was not invented in a single pull. In 1851, the Automatic Continuous Clothing Closure was patented by Elias Howe. Whitcomb Judson, in 1893, created a “clasp locker” that debuted at the Chicago World’s Fair. Our modern zipper didn’t appear until 1913.
Carefully, the man behind the counter connected the slider and the bottom stop. The line behind me grew. People jostled. He didn’t seem to notice. He said, “We want this to work. He must be gentle.” His bright blue eyes were intent.
Time stopped. The world was me and this man, as vintage as the store, as stained as seconds ticking on an analog clock. He showed me how.
“If he doesn’t rush,” he said, “this will work. He can make this work. We want this to work for him.”
I left with both jackets in tune once more—the teeth interlocked, the parts in sync. If he goes slow. If he takes his time. We want this to work for him. We can make this work.