Leg Up

We live in a world of unused knowledge and skill.

— H. G. Wells

I had surgery a week ago to repair my shattered leg. 

Moments before I was rolled into the operating room, the orthopedist pulled a purple Sharpie from his pocket and scribbled his initials—DMT—on my thigh.

The doctor's simple act gave him a leg up, by driving to zero the chance he'd operate on the wrong limb.

SharpieGate aside, we need more Sharpie-wielders in our lives. 

Simple signoffs like my surgeon's (which he would call a "wrong-site protocol") protect us from human error.

We especially need more Sharpie-wielders in government, where human error now runs rampant.

The past few weeks have proven—as if we needed proof—that conservative-run governments are derelict. A freshly minted example reveals how much so.

Boris Johnson's government this week issued a £2 coin to commemorate H.G. Wells, author of The War the Worlds.

 

Wells fans are in an uproar. 

They're demanding to know how the government could have added a leg to the writer's famous "monstrous tripods," depicted on the coin.

“Can I just note that the big walking machine on the coin has four legs?" one fan said. "Four legs. The man famous for creating the Martian tripod. How many people did this have to go through?”

“It’s nice to see Wells memorialized, but it would have been nicer for them to get things right,” another said. “A tripod with four legs is hard to comprehend."

To date, Johnson's government has failed to explain or apologize for the blunder. 

Clearly, it doesn't have a leg to stand on.