When I was twelve years old, I, along with all the other boys in seventh grade took wood shop. I\u2019d grown up in an extended family of builders, plasterer\/masons, plumbers, electricians, and other tradesmen, but I was never much interested in working with my hands. I preferred books to hammers,\u00a0 numbers to plaster, and history and geography to pipes and wires. In short, I was a great disappointment to many of my close relations.<\/p>\n
So it was that I walked into \u201cshop\u201d that first day with little knowledge of what was involved in turning slices of trees into useful things, but I was confident I could learn to do anything. After all, my father and uncles and older cousins all worked with their hands and I was way smarter than they were. It wasn\u2019t until my late teens and early twenties that they all seemed to learn an awful lot very quickly, but that\u2019s a story for another day.<\/p>\n
As I said, my confidence knew no bounds, and I approached the building of our first project, a book stand, as I did other subjects. I listened to the instructions, watched closely as the teacher demonstrated the proper use of saws, planes, hammers, chisels, rasps, hand drills, sandpaper, and screwdrivers, and was sure I\u2019d end up with an exceptional book stand.<\/p>\n
It was during one of the early classes that I learned I could think about it for a while and then see, in my head, how each piece of wood had to be shaped so all would fit together. Granted, it was only four pieces that first time, but it was a talent that would serve me well a decade and a half\u00a0 later when I, newly married, discovered that carpenters and plumbers and electricians were expensive and if I wanted something fixed I\u2019d have to figure out how to do it myself or not eat for a month. It served me even better years later when I started a home business building custom tables and cabinets. And it served me again when I discovered computers and programming and websites. For it\u2019s all the same, in a way. Different things have to\u00a0 be shaped, or coded, or designed so they all fit together just right.<\/p>\n
It was also during one of the early classes I learned an even more valuable lesson \u2013 imagining is not the same as doing. I\u2019ll not torture you with a detailed description of everything I had to do to make that book stand. I will say I nailed the bevels on the rails but the corners on the ends ended up with a much longer curve than they were supposed to have and didn\u2019t exactly, precisely match. By the day of final inspection and grading, I was more than pleased with my B-.<\/p>\n