The skills of my trade

 

It is National Skilled Trades Day. I have mixed feelings about "skilled trades." The definition is a job that requires specialized, hands-on skills learned through focused training rather than a four-year college degree. And thus the great divide. Because as you meander through college studying random things and then reverse engineering your skills after you graduate to try and apply them to jobs people are hiring for, it get complicated. Whereas if you learn a trade like being a plumber, electrician or woodworker, you pretty much know what you are supposed to do.

I always admired people who had hard skills.  I would take my car to the automotive shop and listen to them point, twist things and pull on wires under the hood while I stood by like a baboon looking at a orange inside a mason jar with no idea how to get it out.  But I would nod knowingly because I had four-year college degree that only took me six years to get and the only skills I had to show was how to use the inverted pyramid to write a story. And I had a natural talent for writing headlines. 

Early in my college career my girlfriend's father tried to teach me how to repair vacuum cleaners. He owned a vacuum cleaner sale and repair shop and he wanted me to have a real skill if I was serious about his daughter. As I stripped down Hoover upright vacuums and pulled out worn motor brushes I realized I had neither the inclination nor the aptitude to work with my hands. I picture myself at 50 or 60 repairing vacuum cleaners and my interest in skilled trades and my interest in a long-term life with that particular girlfriend waned dramatically. 

But I still admire people who can fix things. Though my experience with remodelling our house a couple of years ago taught me that skilled trades are also full of not so skilled people who went into a trade because their parents kicked them out of the house and wouldn't let them play video games in the basement anymore. Most the of the plumbers, electricians and tile people who worked on our house seemed as baffled as I was by working with their hands.

So I have come to terms with the skills I do have. How else would I write a blog for more than 20 years and hawk t-shirts with bad puns on the Internet.  Now that is a skilled trade. Or at least a skilled trade-off.