Shop

  I wasn't a very good student in junior high (middle school).  I couldn't really concentrate, since I was getting beat up all the time.  At least, that was my excuse.  I've already written about how much I hated gym class, but there is another one I hated almost as much:  Shop Class.

 The boys would take Shop, while the girls took Home Economics.  The first semester of Shop required the boys to plane and smooth a block of wood and then take it to the lathe to turn the block of wood into something useful.  Some would make baseball bats, while others would make legs for a small chair.  So, to start off, you put your block of wood in a vise and started planing.  The plane was pretty heavy, and the wood had bark all over it.  I just couldn't get the plane to smooth the wood.  When I would get to the end of the block, the plane would go down instead of up.  It was the plane's fault.  The end of the block had to have square corners.  Mine were round.  I went through several blocks.  Once someone had squared off the ends, they were to saw off the edges to make them straight.  I never got to sawing.  Mr. Sease was an ex-military man, who may have had high blood pressure.  I know that I would see his face get beet-red, when he saw me just planing away.  By the end of the semester, I hadn't sawed much less lathed.  The school lost a lot of money from blocks they bought, and I had planed.  

 The second semester was Mechanical Drawing.  I thought this would be easier than Shop.  It involved sitting at a desk and using instruments to figure out degrees and measurements to create a house on paper.  Since my father had studied architecture at Clemson, I thought this would be easy for me.  For some reason, I was always 1/16th of an inch off in my drawings.  Our teacher wasn't pleased.  My lines were straight.  My angles were good, but I was always 1/16th of an inch off.  I'm sure it was the ruler's fault.  

 I failed both semesters. My father wasn't pleased, because he knew I would never follow in his footsteps with architecture. I can say that I have never used a plane to smooth wood since, nor have I had to measure something within 1/16th of an inch.  I have built stuff, including stage scenery, but nothing that precise.  Almost but not quite.  The story of my life.  I guess that is why I am a perfectionist today.  A teachable moment from school.