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| Thou Shalt Not Steal You Dirty Hillbilly. |
For some insane reason I have
forgotten to write about wood shop and drafting classes from junior
high I guess I was just in a hurry to get to the next stuff and I
overlooked some nice juicy low hanging fruit right over here. In 9th
grade students could choose to take wood shop and I very much choose
to do that. I love building things and using tools and to do both at
school was a dream come true. We had a week of safety and operational
instruction and my bit was getting pretty chomped by the time we were
to pick our project for the semester. I chose an awesome looking
plank chest that looked like it would be right at home in a pioneer
home. I was skilled in project management and in the use of tools so
I attacked the project with vigor. The job was supposed to take us
all semester or about 24 hours to finish but this looked like about a
two hour job to me. I worked at a pace that greatly concerned the
shop teacher who was naturally concerned for my safety and his
liability but I demonstrated my competence and his worries were
assuaged. In the first day I had all of the planks cut. On the second
I had them all dado-ed and the edges routed. On the third a curious
thing had happened all of my ready for assembly boards were replaced
with rough cut boards and this lurpy goof of a hillbilly named Zeek
or Zane or some other insane Oaky name was much further along with
his exact same project. I confronted him about the old switch-a-roo
and he flatly denied touching my stuff. After that I started writing
my name with a pencil on the work I had finished and started hatching
a most nefarious plan. I had finished all of the body parts for a
second time and got to work on the lid but I measured wrong on the
two side piece of the lid but instead of throwing them away I left
them out without my name on them with a virtual 'For Steal' sign on
them as bait for that lumber thief ZeeBob. He took the bait and my
gambit turned to end game as he started to cut planks to fit the
erroneous side pieces. I waited for him to realize his error as I
rebuilt mine to the correct specifications but he was in such a hurry
he never checked his lid to the box. It just kept getting funnier as
he raced to keep pace with me in a tacit competition. On the sixth
day I was done letting the varnish on my lid and box dry and
proceeded with assembly. ZeeDiddley was a day behind even with the
stealing so I got to finish first. The next class period I had been
assigned to help the other kids finish their projects when I took
some time to watch Zibronee assemble his mismatched lid and box. They
were off by a full three inches and he was dumbfounded about how he
could have gotten it so wrong. The shop teacher asked him if he
measured carefully and he claimed he had. That is when I took the
opportunity to remind Zippy that in the future the best plan would be
to do his own work and not steal mine because I had made some lid
ends which were three inches short that someone had stolen from me so
those must be the one he had. He again denied stealing anything but
at that point a massively malformed box was all of the proof and
apology I needed. Zane somehow found it in his malformed ethics
justified to blame me for his thievery which resulted a mismatched
lid because I didn't warn him it was a faulty piece he was stealing.
I was not sorry.
