MiKiE P's Thoughts_musings_randomness.

Gods and Clods

angrywhiteman:

Today, I came home from work to find my thermostat reading a paltry 51 degrees. This to me would indicate that there just might possibly be something wrong with my furnace, so I proceeded to head down to the basement to try to see what the problem was. As I get down there, I remove the front cover and take a look, only to realize that I have no fucking idea what I’m looking at. In fact, aside from the entire unit being on fire, I also have no idea what the problem could be. I suspect that it could just be the pilot light being out, but I really have no way of being certain, and seeing as how the whole unit is older than I am, I’d rather have someone who knows what they’re doing take a look at it rather than potentially blowing up myself and my entire family. I call my energy provider, only to find out that not surprisingly, on the coldest day of the year so far, they’re busy as hell and it could be a while. I subsequently end up waiting about 6 hours before a disheveled, greasy looking man who would have felt at home at any parking lot carnival shows up at my door. He doesn’t say a word to me as he heads to the basement and directly for the furnace. I feel it necessary to point out to him my suspicions about the pilot light, along with previous issues we’ve had with the unit and my apprehensions about attempting to mess with it. He asks me for some matches, which I readily supply, and then, sensing that he doesn’t particularly care to work with me standing over his shoulder, I head back upstairs. He comes back up in about 3 minutes and tells me that dirt had fallen on my pilot light and blown it out. Feeling a bit like an idiot, I apologized to him about making him come out, and I told him that I felt better having someone else re-light the damn thing because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. His response was a simple, “I can tell”.

After he had gone, and after my wife just shook her head at me and called me an idiot, I thought about what he said. As difficult as it was, I came to the realization that I’ve spent the last 5 years and thousands upon thousands of dollars going to college, only to come away with no practical knowledge of any kind. Sure, I can extrapolate data and manipulate it into quantifiable numbers, perform complex mathematical, statistical, and financial equations, write research papers, or even probably tell you the proper use of possessive pronouns (at least after consulting my copy of The Everyday Writer)-but what good does that do me in the overall hunter-gatherer sense of things? The fact of the matter is, if I were among a group of survivors living in a post-apocalyptic society, I would be the first one chosen to be eaten due to my lack of usable skills. It’s depressing for me to think about, but in a survival situation, the last thing that anyone needs is an accountant or financial planner.

So, am I upset that I was insulted in my own home by a man who looked like he should be holding a bag of sawdust outside of the tilt-a-whirl? Not at all, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I deserved it-I think even a slightly trained monkey could have done what he did. Second of all, he’s opened my eyes to the fact that I need to expand my volume of practical mechanical knowledge, which I am now vowing to do. I’ll be damned if my son is going to grow up as clueless as I have. If they’ve written a book about it, I’m fairly certain I can learn how to fix anything, and I plan on doing just that and passing that wisdom onto my son, which I never had anyone do for me. Lastly, I’m fairly certain we’re quite a ways off from the apocalypse, which makes me comfortable to say that thanks to my “useless” college education, my future earning potential FAR outweighs his, especially once I finish grad school. The fact remains that he’ll always be fixing things for people, and I’ll always be the one paying people like him to fix my shit for me. That alone makes me feel warm and cozy inside, and I know I’ll be sleeping soundly tonight.