'This Old Crack House' #7: My bruised ego

Two out of three lumberjocks surveyed say, they would rather have a sliver under there finger nail than get their ego bruised.

Please pass the tweezers.

I am an L.B.D. (learn by doing type of person). The carpenter I hired not only was temperamental and greedy; he certainly didn’t want me to learn anything from him. He called it “job security”.

I called it short-sighted and shellfish under my breath. Right there I said to myself – if I ever was to learn woodworking I would teach anyone who wanted to learn about it, and I would do it freely.

If you show me once how to do something, I catch on very quickly and never have to be shown again. It wasn’t like I was going to steal his trade secrets. I merely wanted to learn how he did the work.

My job, working with the public, requires me to learn how to work with and around all kinds of different people and personalities. We are trained well. That doesn’t make it anymore pleasant to work with these difficult people. You merely learn how to tolerate them. Certainly causes some long days at times.

I have developed pretty thick skin over time but this doesn’t mean I like being treated badly.

I never had an issue with the carpenter whom I hired, quality of work. I just found him to be almost impossible to be around or get along with. Communications and decency wasn’t a long suit of his. There were other things about him but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I’m a very trusting person overall.

Too trusting I guess. Naive.

Looking back -perhaps there was a trust issue.

I wish I would have at the time gone with my gut.

Hindsight would turn out to be genius.

Like I said before beggars can’t be choosey.

Especially when you have a large hole in the side of your house and it is spring and rains are almost daily.

Besides I knew my limitations with my hand. It was long ago made clear to me by the doctors that I wouldn’t have much function in this hand.

After all what good is a one handed carpenter I thought.

Looking back on it – it’s sure funny how self pity, fate, and destiny will accept your resignation if you offer it.

I not only offered it I embraced and submitted it in triplicate. I had quit – period!

When you sit around feeling sorry for your self long enough and are told you can’t do something enough times, you not only believe it, your behavior reflects this.

If you don’t have a compelling reason like I didn’t to use the mangled hand you simply don’t use it. My job, or anything else for that matter, didn’t require or force me to learn how to use what I had.

That was about to change.

Forever.

(Protected by copy write, all rights reserved ,D.Jerzak 2-26-2007)

-- Dusty