A Darcy's Fable

I just completed an article about a method to arrive at a reasonable design margin for pump selection when my granddaughter came into my office and asked “Pop Pop, can you read me a story?” Before I have an engineer review an article for technical content, I like to pass it by a non-engineer to check for clarity. I figure my granddaughter falls into the non-engineer group. After I had finished, she had a wrinkled brow and looked a little confused. Not to disappoint, I decided it was time for Darcy's Fable.

The Story of the Timid Hunter

Once upon a time in the Mystical Woods lived Poindexter the Timid*. You see Poindexter was a wolf, but not a normal wolf that likes to hunt in packs, he's a loner. Also, Poindexter doesn't like to take chances and always wanted to play it safe and be prepared for any situation that came his way. As a result of his unusual ways, he was always teased by the other wolves in his town. Now don't get me wrong, the other wolves weren’t bullying our main character, it was more of a good natured ribbing (after all, I don't want to give the wolf a bad reputation in fables and stories).

One day a family of bears named Cost started hanging around the wolves’ village. The bear family had a Papa Bear named Ursus the Operator, a Mama Bear named Ursules the Maintainer, and a Baby Bear named Ursus the First. You see, Goldie Locks broke into the Cost’s old house and trashed the joint, so they were out looking for a new place to live.

Once the Cost’s family started hanging around the wolves’ village, their presence drove the elk and deer away. The wolves in the village didn't like this and said "The bears may be bigger than we are, but they have no right to scare away our food." The wolves were getting very agitated when our hero Poindexter the Timid said “Something must be done, and I will make it my spirit quest to drive away the bears.” He saw this as an opportunity to not only to rid the village of the pesky bears but also as a way to improve his street cred with the other wolves.

Poindexter the Timid then started getting ready for battle. He sat down and developed a list of things he needed to drive off the bears.

The first item on the list was a sword. He didn’t know how big the bears in the Cost family were, but he knew bears could grow very large and so he got the biggest sword he could buy. With a 5 foot blade, it could surely slay the largest grizzly bear in the woods. He took the sword home and started practicing. With great difficulty he could pull the sword from its scabbard, swing it around without falling over, and was even able to get a few solid whacks in on a tree trunk.

Next he thought about the bear’s huge teeth and decided to get body armor. So off to the village he went to see Hercules, the local blacksmith /tailor. Poindexter told Hercules that he was going to drive the bears away and needed a thick suit of armor to protect him from the bite of the largest bear. Once the suit of body armor was finished, Poindexter tried it on and liked what he saw.  The only problem was that was very cumbersome, and he had great difficulty walking home.

By the time our hero had all the items on his list, he had accumulated a helmet to protect his head, a large mace to smite the most formidable bear, an archer’s bow to get in a long distance strike, and a host of other lethal weapons he felt were required to his quest.

See if you can find an image of a wolf in armor and a sword on the internet.

When Poindexter the Timid started on his quest all the wolves in the village gathered around to see him off. All was going well until he came to the log bridge over the mighty Green River. Half way over the bridge Poindexter fell into the deep river and sank out of site. The wolves stared in disbelief and were frozen by what they had just witnessed.

The Cost family was out for a walk and saw our hero fall into the river and sink out of site. The three bears sprang into action. They ran to the river and jumped in to rescue Poindexter. Because of all the added weight of the body armor and weapons it was hard for the bears to bring the wolf to the surface. When they finally got him on the bank of the river, it was too late, he had drowned in the Green River and was dead.

Just then, my granddaughter said, “Now I get your article, Pop Pop. When designing a piping system, you need to plan for realistic contingencies. If your design margins are excessive, it’s easy to over design and not meet the process objectives.”

I was all smiles. It was obvious from her remarks she understood the focus of my article. I then asked her what she thought of the story. “Well, the bears were nice. At least Poindexter the Timid wasn’t eaten alive by the bears, you know, Operating Cost, Maintenance Cost, and First Cost.”

* In this story I am referring to the characters “Spirit Names” which is a practice of obtaining a name based on the way the being lives their life.

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