Carpentry

            Courage is defined as the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery. But for me, this is only half of the definition. Being brave and not afraid isn’t only useful when there’s physical harm or danger, but also when you’re being mentally persecuted. Personally I haven’t been through an experience where I’ve had to rise to a different person and save someone’s life out of bravery and courage. However, this summer would have been one my greatest tests of perseverance and courage.

My summer isn’t like most high school kid's days off and fun time, instead I took off my last quarter of school to start apprenticing for carpentry.  I figured that it should be pretty simple because I’ve taken shop class for six years, won regional skills competition, and worked at a flooring company. So me being dumb and cocky, I thought the concept of construction shouldn’t be too difficult to grasp. Anyways, first week not too difficult, just painted smart trim and slowly got to know the guys like any green horn.

As time went on, the guys started warming up to me and stopped treating me like I was the innocent new boy that needed to be watched. I became the younger brother type, “Jared grab this. And while your at that do this”.  Most people would take offense to being told to be running around all day, but for me, I loved it. I wanted to prove myself to the guys and my boss that I could do this. So I took orders and ran with them, everything I did I tried my best and fast as possible. Yes, mistakes were made along the way; however, by making mistakes not only did I learned from them, but my whole thinking changed. Whenever I was to do something I wasn’t sure about I stopped and  thought about all the things that could go wrong and what my supervisor would do in this situation.

I started to get the rhythm of things and was more confident with the job and crew, but things changed, and I suddenly started working with the same guy every day instead of jumping around with different guys and job sites. At first I was pumped because I knew him from school and we played football together, but as days got longer his attitude towards me changed and I was more like a stupid kid who shouldn’t be in this trade. I respect my elders, coworkers, and people who  have priority over me and he was all of that, so there was no being higher with more authority to show that we are the same. From then on I really took on the "new guy" role running around and doing stuff that he didn’t want to do, but this was now called being “bitch”. This still didn’t bother me because I expected it at the beginning but he started getting harsher with the word and threw in new words that aren’t acceptable to say.

As this went on, my patience started losing its worth and I became frustrated with myself and the job! Being told that you’re a bitch, useless, and stupid is not an ideal thing to be told every day. Until one day I stopped responding to him and quit talking for a while.  He would have had to be stupid not to read my emotions, but he said one more thing and I told him sternly to f*** off. From then on things didn’t change for him, but on my part I stopped caring about the bad remarks and name calling and accepted who I was to be. I took that name “bitch” made it my own and moved on from taking it so offensive. Yes, it’s still not a nice word, but I learned that he wasn’t making its so meaningful either but having fun with it instead.

Courage isn’t about fighting and showing strength to the offender but doing what’s right and the difficult thing. Because for as easy as it would have been to just slug him in the jaw and quit the job like he deserved I choose not to take it and stick through the summer no matter how difficult.

By Jared Dyck