It's a Dirty Job, But...

I have certain skills. I play with words instinctively; I like to think I'm pretty good at it, although I lack any credentials to attest to it. I love to craft music: I have been composing since I was four, though, again, I have no idea what to do with my work.

These are esoteric talents, to be sure. I'm consoled by the notion that my words (and my music, I hope) will outlive me. But in the meantime neither prose nor melody serve any practical purpose.

Practical skills I lack. I'll freely admit I don't even have the necessary mindset required to pick them up, nor any inclination to attain that mindset. Mostly because the practical skills are...dirty.

It sounds prissy. I don't think of it that way--nobody likes to think of himself that way--but maybe it is. I just don't like getting dirty. I don't like the way dirt gets in the pores of my fingers and seems to swell them into giant throbbing sausages. Most practical jobs, given my non-aptitude, involve blood, sweat, and inevitably tears.

My dad sweats blood with every DIY project he tackles, but he never cries...or maybe it's just that his tears come out in the form of poetic profanities. His skill set is several notches above mine, and it's elevated further by sheer bullheadedness.

My stepdad is another creature entirely. He can strip and rebuild a car engine or a house (indeed, one of our homes was thoroughly gutted and transformed from the inside out while we lived in it). To my teenage eyes, this sort of thing was otherworldly, almost an act of God. It inspired awe, in the religious sense of that word, with an attendant healthy dose of fear. Anybody who could build a bathroom or rewire a house could do, well, anything. Who's to say John wouldn't take it into his head to shift my bed into some alternate dimension while I slept? I might wake up one morning...elsewhere.

My wife's whole family is full of people like this, people who have no qualms about getting dirty if it means the job will get done. They all live by the maxim, "no pain, no gain" (where I'm like, "no pain, no...pain! Duh!). Eva's the handyman around this house. There's not much she can't do, if she puts her mind to it or if somebody says "you can't do that". Her brother and father are the same, only more so.

Jim's been doing some work around our place, on the grounds that (a) he can and (b) I don't wanna. So the deck is stained and has sprouted steps, there's a new bed for a garden, the yard is neatly trimmed and straightened up, and lots of little improvements have been made. (Hey, I *could* have put the handles on the garbage and recycling corral, in only seven times the time it took him.)

I was talking to him between bouts of dizziness while he worked. He said that it pissed him off how 'the trades' are demonized and marginalized. It pisses me off, too. I mean, hell, I used to do it myself, but that was because the people who took shop tended to be the people who beat me up. I'm well past that, now.

It seems to me there's a growing anti-intellectual climate in my own country, let alone in the States. My government hates science and likes to revel in its ignorance. As distasteful as this is, I could live with it easier if it meant that plumbers and electricians and welders and what have you could maybe get a little respect. Sadly, they don't get near as much as they should. We Takers and Fakers like to forget that without a whole bunch of Makers labouring in the background, we wouldn't be here.

This may be beginning to change. The first thing I hit upon scrounging up material for this blog post:

I'm not sure if Mike Rowe has all the skills he surveys, but I love his attitude. (And my wife says he's hot...not sure about that, the angle of my dangle's all wrong, but hey, whatever.)

The Jims and Johns and Evas of the world are unsung heroes. Let's get these people the recognition they deserve.