the past few days at work...

Friday during break at work, the laborer foreman (Ozzy Osbourne) started looking at me as I was checking out a Lull. He was just sitting there, looking at me for about ten seconds. Ten seconds is a long time to have your eyes on someone if you're not talking or anything. It got pretty uncomfortable. Then he finally broke the silence, "You sure are white."

Odd.



I learned another lesson about tools making life easier and harder on Thursday. The tool this time is a wheelbarrow. They seem to be a pretty open and shut case. They make life easier, right? I'm not entirely sure. The problem with wheelbarrows is they are capable of holding very heavy loads--loads which easily outweigh me, possibly even doubling my weight. "But wait," you say. "That's why there is the lever and wheel to make it easy to move around." To this I say, "Correct you are." So you can easily lift this large load thanks to leverage, but you still have to control a large load that wants to throw you around. If the load is not balanced, it can be especially tricky. There isn't much to keep the barrow from tilting to the left or right. And if it begins to tilt, you can pretty much forget it. It's gonna spill, or at least come very very close and you're going to strain yourself to keep it upright.

But then after about five consecutive trips, the wheelbarrow and me sorta clicked. There's a certain fine touch you have to attain to keep it under control at all times. It's sorta like operating a clutch or steering a canoe. It seems easy when you think about it, but you quickly learn that it takes a certain technique. Then it's not so bad.

The verdict: wheelbarrows must make life easier, otherwise they wouldn't still be around.


Then I learned a secret.

Over the course of the past couple of months, I learned a very valuable secret to being able to lift and destroy very heavy and very solid objects. It wasn't easy for me to uncover the secret, and it took some gleaning from what fellow laborers said to figure it out.

The secret isn't anything like "No pain, no gain," or "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger." The secret is Wheaties. This cereal has come up about three different times, and it was brought up by three different people.

The first time Wheaties were brought up was at Benton Central. I was trying to push a wheelbarrow to the top of a mound of rubble, but lost balance and it spilled to the side. Jesse says, "What's the matter, didn't you eat your Wheaties this morning?"

The second time was at Sigma Chi. I was carrying a large piece of metal lath and plaster. It was large enough that it was heavy, and had enough sharp corners that it was hard to hold, so I was struggling. Someone, I didn't know his name at the time, says to me, "Did you forget your Wheaties?"

The third time, Jason was dragging a floor joist for me to carry out of a window. He lifts up one end for me to grab, smiles, and says, "I hope you ate your Wheaties this morning."

Despite how it seems to be pretty common knowledge that all you need is Wheaties to get the job done, a lot of guys still insist that cussing is the way to get the job done.