Something I was too drunk to say last night

Get your minds out of the gutters right now, people. I’ll explain myself.

Twenty or so of Saskatoon’s Freethinkers went to Winston’s Pub last night for a bit of a shindig and I chatted with several interesting people over the night. Best anecdote came from a woman who sells tombstones and her encounter with a woman who loved her dog more than she did her husband. Near the end of my evening after I drank a few glasses of beer I was seated by “Fernando” who said he was a plumber. I made the mistake of not only sounding surprised by the response to my question, but I also gave him the typical answer given to probably everyone in a trade at some point, “Well everyone’s gonna need that..”

I can explain where I wanted to go with that, now that I’m sober and have had time to think it through. Thinkin’ and drinkin’ doesn’t work very well for me. Har har.

Fernando pointed out that people would survive without plumbers. I don’t particularly want to have to dig latrines or go outside at -40 to use an outhouse. Oh, but that’s what a gazunder is for (it goes under the bed). So yes, we’d make do. We’d learn to live with the discomfort and inconvenience that comes from not getting to flush all our little ones and twos away.

Can people fix their own plumbing problems? Sure, if they know what they’re doing. If they don’t know what they’re doing, they can try and consult a book or a website with easy how-to’s, but plumbing is a four year course at a trade school. Can’t just pop some pipes together and turn the water back on and call it good. Well, Dad can, but he’s a rare breed, one of those men who somehow acquire skills over the years above and beyond their employment needs. Carpentry, wiring, plumbing, flooring, whatever he needs to do he can do.

So not counting my dad, most people are generally lazy. They might not like having to pay someone and they might not like having to wait for someone, but when it’s a choice between waiting for a pro or getting their own hands dirty, they’ll call a pro.

Now, strangely, I’m reminded of some ridiculous show I caught on cable one night while we were visiting a couple that my folks played cards with sometimes and since so few adult card games require five, I was flipping channels instead. I wound up at HGTV, I think it was, in the middle of one of those home renovation shows.

The woman had decided to take it upon herself to add an opening in the wall between her kitchen and living room and rented some type of power tool that would cut through everything. And it did. I distinctly remember thinking, this woman is an idiot. “Load bearing wall” was obviously a phrase she’d never heard before, and I guess she thought all her electrical toys ran off brain waves or something because she didn’t check for wiring either.

Part of me was hoping it was all a sham, that nobody would be that dumb, that it was all a set up for these guys and their fix up show. She seemed way too happy when she explained how she cut into that wall, with a pantomime replay and everything. Now that I’ve browsed through Lovely Listing I fear she really could have been on the level, even if her project wasn’t.

So, back to my point, if there was one. I think trades get neglected when Career Days come around. I don’t recall anyone with a practical skill coming to our classrooms. Maybe the automotive guys got information on job prospects related to their hands-on interests but the rest of us were wooed by people who were doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc. University course graduates.

Part of me wonders what would have happened if I’d gone to SIAST instead of university. Would I have come out of there with useful skills applicable to jobs right away, instead of settling for retail and a low paying library job? My four years worth of student loans took a decade to pay back. Would I have been better off financially if I’d done a trade instead? Maybe.

Ah well, the past is another planet. Maybe the alter me in some other dimension wishes she’d tried university. I can’t say I have a lot of regrets over my choices (well, I could, but nobody wants to read about that). You can’t always find what you want until you’ve seen everything you don’t want…