Daub: (v) to spread plaster, mud, etc. on or over something

Shortcuts lead to long-suffering.

That’s been my finding.

Some time ago, I had my speakers set up in an auditorium and the brutality of road travel had left them a bit chipped, needing to be painted.

I had the bright idea of buying a can of black spray paint and touching them up so their age would not show unless you were standing right in front of them, staring.

It seemed like a great idea.

I will not lie to you—since the speakers were up on stands, I did actually consider that it would be better to take them down to the ground to spray them. But I quickly rejected that—because I lease a room to laziness in my brain, and since he pays most of the rent, I decided to stand on a chair, as close as I could get, and spray the worn places.

Let me tell you:

There is a reason they call it a spray can.

It sprays.

The mist floats through the air and on this particular occasion, it landed on a perfectly white wall directly behind the speaker.

To be honest, the speakers were not ugly enough to be noticed.

But the spray on the white wall was a definite attention-getter.

I had a problem.

Do I tell someone, who owns the auditorium, that I blackened his wall? Or do I try to fix it?

I chose the latter.

I bought a can of paint that was as close to the wall color as possible. But no matter how I tried to blend the whites, you could still tell two things:

There was some blackened shadow underneath, and where I stopped painting was an obvious line of demarcation.

I didn’t know what to do.

A young lady who was traveling with me suggested that it would be better, instead of using a paint brush or a roller, to daub on the white paint with a sponge, letting it dry, until every single portion of the black was covered.

I wanted to reject the idea.

I wanted her to be wrong so we could be wrong together.

But my greater desire was to get this horrible mistake into my past.

So I daubed.

With the artistic style of a Van Gogh or Reubens, I carefully covered up the black splat.

I stepped back three feet, five feet, and stood on a chair—peering right at it.

I could not see it.

I was overjoyed that my daubing had eliminated my sobbing.

That evening when the owner of the building showed up, he walked up to me and said, “What’s wrong with the wall?”

I looked up, aghast.

“I didn’t notice,” I lied.

He flicked his hand in the air, and as he walked away he said, “I’ll just have ’em paint it.”