Friday, February 29, 2008

A WhoWhat?

Yesterday I met the father of one of Zoe's friends for the first time. He'd been out of town for the last two months, and he'd just gotten back to Austin. He surprised his daughter by showing up at school for lunch, and we chatted for a few minutes while we waited for our kids to get settled in the cafeteria. It turns out he's a millwright. Anyone who knows what a millwright is, raise your hand.

Yeah. I'd never heard of it either. Turns out Zoe's Friend's Dad travels around the country moving, assembling, and maintaining heavy equipment at construction sites. There's an interesting entry regarding the history of millwrighting(?) millwrightery(?) at Wikipedia: Millwright job description.

Discovering things like this fascinates me. You get to a point in your life (let's call it 40), when you have a pretty good feel for the world around you--at least the little piece of it you inhabit. You sort of know what jobs there are--even if you don't know specifics about them. And then something like this--millwright--flies out of left field and smashes you in the face. How the heck had it never even occurred to me that highly-skilled people have to get that stuff where it needs to be and make sure it works?

Honestly, my ignorance astounds me.

Millwright!

That's your word of the day.
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1 comment:

No One said...

I am delighted when the world manages to surprise me in that fashion. You think you know the landscape, but there is something in the low grass right in front of you, waiting to be discovered. How can we ever really grow weary of such a world? We just have to give up the idea that we will ever really know much about it.

My first day of college was both humbling and liberating. I was accustomed to being the smart kid in the room, and considered myself pretty well read. My freshman ethics professor polled his class, wanting to know our reading habits. True to form, I read more often than anyone in the class. Then he started asking questions.

It turns out that reading a book and understanding it are two very different things. Knowing the plot, theme, mood, style, etc., might well get you an "A" on your high school test, but none of those things really help you understand what the book is about.

I was mortified. The world suddenly got a lot bigger, and I knew much less than I thought I did. I'd been exposed as...ignorant.

Once I got used to the idea, though, it wasn't such a bad thing. There's always more to learn, even about things one thinks of as familiar.

Thanks for the post. That brought a big smile to my face this morning. Oh, and sorry for hijacking the thread.

5:34 AM, March 06, 2008

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