listen to me Mr. Thomas, let me tell you one thing...

one of the first things I noticed about my carpentry job, my first time in the real workforce, the huge crew of 30-something adults and then Me, was the feeling that I wasn't the object of attention.

in school, as a young person, there is always a strange tinge to the adult-youth interactions. in your family too. there are these other, older people and they're trying to help you - they want to see you do well. at Wilkinson, it seemed at first that I was just a blip. Just another dude there working, of no special importance at all; nobody attached any feeling toward whether I did well or not. I was not the focus.

what I learned later, sitting eating lunch on a pile of form lumber, drinking coffee on the sidewalk waiting for the job to open, was that there was a focus on my youngness but it wasn't about me. as a group, carpenters, concrete guys, tile-setters are pretty much what you'd expect them to be: a little brash or guarded, generally insincere, and then of course the crude humor. but get one of these guys alone with a young twenty-something and suddenly they're a fount of world-knowledge, a geyser of when I was your age and I wish I done this differently and if you're smart you'll start to, etc etc etc. everybody has their story about whats best for me, Young Thomas, and how they learned it and why its the right thing.

"You need to work every Saturday you can man, when you're young. Get your hours in now man, pay your dues..."

"Finish paying off that truck Thomas and then start SAVING. Put every penny you can away and make a down payment on a house SOON."

"You go down to one of those fancy hotels in San Francisco; go the the W, go to the St. Francis. On a Thursday night go down there, not a weekend party night, go on a Thursday. Sit at the bar, alone and order an expensive beer and wait. Just wait Thomas. If there's not a 30 something woman coming up to you within 15 minutes I'll eat my shorts..."

nobody really has ever asked me what my priorities are. what I want to be doing next year, why I am here in the first place. I wouldn't tell them if they asked. but the thing I've noticed, nodding my head and listening to these stories carefully, is that it's not about me, its about them. they need to have someone listen, to have their experience validated. maybe their kids won't listen. maybe their wives won't listen. they're wanting the sound of their voice hitting absorbent ears (and who doesn't?)

 

and who doesn't.