The Little Things That Matter (And The Ones That Don’t)

Remember Corduroy? It’s a children’s book where a young girl named Lisa wants to get a teddy bear wearing green overalls at the toy store, but her mother refuses believing that she wouldn’t be happy with it because one of the straps was missing a button, but Lisa didn’t care either way. After the bear comes to life and tries and fails to secure a new button, Lisa came back the next day with some money and bought the bear naming it Corduroy and replacing the missing button.

The whole thing that gets me about this story as an adult is how Lisa was able to overlook the fact that Corduroy was missing a button and loved him enough to take him home regardless of that.

Being on the spectrum, and working in a profession that requires strong attention to detail, it’s not a surprise that I’m writing about this.

Not long after I saw KISS last week, I discovered online that Funko has re-released official KISS Pop figures and some of my friends in the KISS Army have already bought them. Some people went on about how the instruments the figures held did not match the real ones. Despite me having an ability to notice detail, I didn’t care about that and would have just left them as they are, should I choose to buy them because it’s KISS and I love KISS!

Then, a few days ago, when I found out that Disney was launching their own streaming service this fall called Disney+, I made my opinion that I was not interested because Disney movies are far to precious to me for me to just rent as many as I can for a monthly fee and I preferred to buy DVDs instead. Someone said to me “But it’s at 480p” well, frankly my dear I don’t give a damn because I grew up with watching movies on that quality and it never bothered me.

See what I mean there? The point from that children’s story and those two things I just shared? I think it just goes and shows that we sometimes take little details too seriously these days.

When we start to think more about quality than quantity, we want it to be absolutely perfect otherwise there’s no deal. So if there’s little details like an action figure of Alice Cooper doesn’t have the eye makeup painted perfectly, or a DVD is in widescreen format and not in perfect HD resolution that you’d get at a movie theater, it seems we have a tendency to reject it immediately.

In the pharmacy profession it’s one thing, I can totally understand why these little details should not be ignored because if one of my patients told me that they wanted their tablets cut in half because they were specifically instructed by their doctor to take half a dose and they couldn’t split the tablets themselves, then I would do as they request and split the tablets for them. Think about it, this could be a medication that the patient needs to keep taking because it’s vital to their survival based on what medical condition they have.

But for little things that aren’t necessary for survival, I don’t see why it matters. When I took a look at all the people whining about Mass Effect Andromeda’s facial issues, I just sat back and enjoyed playing the game because: This particular flaw in the graphics did not affect my ability to play the game in any way. I was still able to boot it up and play for however long I wanted to. The same thing applies to the three examples I gave above.

Sure, Corduroy was missing a button when Lisa wanted to buy him, but at least that’s better than a tear in his fluffy abdomen that would need to be sewn. Sure, with DVDs it may be 480p which isn’t as high as what you’d get from Netflix or the local theater, but at least the film is still watchable as long as it doesn’t freeze or go static constantly right?

I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s always going to be things in life that matter and that don’t. I don’t want to judge those who care about little things that I would find useless. If you’re somebody who feels obliged to repaint some figures because their weapons don’t match what’s on the show, or need to watch every movie at the same quality you’d get at the theater, knock yourself out. Maybe I’m just a little more laid back.

Of course, I can also understand if it were something you spent a lot of money on, you’d want it to be perfect. Teletraan-1 wasn’t perfect when I finally brought her home, in fact she needed to be opened up because the cord that made the HDD accessible was left unplugged after she was assembled!

But I guess when it gets right down to it, it all depends on what you bought, if it’s something expensive, then yeah I’d totally get irritated if there was a noticeable flaw, but for anything under $100, I don’t think it matters, but it may also matter depending on what kind of item it is.

👽 Emily