I know in today’s modern, progressive American society where every child gets a trophy and they are all “#1”, we’re not supposed to compare people to each other, but I recently experienced two very different spectrums of humanity over the course of a week that I just had to share.
As many of you know, we have been involuntarily re-piping all of the water pipes in our house thanks to the perfect combination of the bureaucracy that put way too much crap in the water that comes into our house and the regulatory bodies that made it perfectly legal to build my house with only the second highest grade of five possible quality grades of copper pipe. Naturally, corrosive water and cheap pipes resulted in an unbelievable amount of water leaks in our neighborhood, including six in my home over the course of a year.
As part of this re-pipe project, during a walk-through by the construction company overseeing the work crews, I was instructed to cover just about everything in the entire house in plastic tarps to save it from being covered in a very fine, but very difficult to remove layer of drywall dust. We took all the pictures off the walls, boxed up every knick-knack in the house, and then, the evening before the re-pipe was to begin, planned to cover every piece of furniture and anything not in a box in plastic.
Being the frugal individual you all know me to be, I proceeded directly to the closest Walmart to get the plastic tarps I would need to cover all of my earthly possessions from the impending, menacing drywall dust.
So, this is when I found myself leaving the Walmart parking lot, as I so often do, after a full and long day of working, prior to heading home. Plastic tarps...check! Having to go home and spend hours prepping the house for the re-pipe instead of relaxing after having worked all day...check!
Now, if you’ve ever visited the Walmart in Laguna Niguel, California, you also will have noticed that nine times out of ten when you leave the parking lot, there is a member of our not-so-transient homeless community sitting at the exit with a sign, asking you to part with some of your money on your way out of the parking lot.
You can call me heartless and selfish and so many things worse, but you will never see my car stop to hand these folks some of the money that I have earned by working day in and day out for the past 25 years. Call it a personal choice. Do I give to charity? You bet. Do I also part ways with nearly 30% of the money I earn each and every year and send it to the local, state and federal governments, which provide programs that help the less fortunate? Guilty as charged! Do I put icing on that cake by handing more money to the folks asking for it around town? No, I do not. Bless those of you that do, but I’ve made my decision and I’m sticking to it.
But this particular evening, I did slow down a bit as I passed the person manning this corner on which there is always someone with a sign, soliciting donations to their own private cause because he definitely did not fit the mold of the usual types of folks manning that corner. I was in disbelief. There, sitting on an empty milk crate, was a young man, easily older than a high school senior, but definitely not much older than your average college graduate; a good-looking guy, about 6 feet tall, fit and overtly muscular, though he was wearing a loose-fitting jacket.
So, let me get this straight...You are younger than me...you are taller than me...you are definitely in much better shape than me, yet I worked all day, and here you are, not working, asking me to give you some of the money I worked for today.
Now I hear all you voices of reason out there, coming down on me for not knowing this man’s circumstances and all of the reasons that he was on that corner with that sign, but as someone who has worked every type of job from manual labor to sitting at a desk as well as managing teams in both types of jobs, trust me when I tell you I think I am a pretty good judge of character of who is physically and mentally capable of working, and this kid was a Soviet propaganda minister’s dream.
Now that we have established the first point of my comparison, let me flash forward a few days for you. I spent that evening covering everything in plastic and prepping the house, and then spent the next two days working from home, holed up in one of our spare bedrooms while the re-pipe company’s hard working team ripped apart my drywall, pulled out my horrible copper piping and replaced it with brand new non-metal piping that is supposed to still be leak free long after I leave this world. While I had these teams of hard-working, polite and very respectful gentlemen working so hard on my house to fix my plumbing, I could not help but think back to the kid with the sign asking for money on the corner. But, that’s still not even the hard-working counterpoint in my comparison.
The locking doorknob and that leads from the house into the garage has been giving me trouble for some time. It’s original equipment from when they built the house back in 1997, and while I had the innards rebuilt and rekeyed back in 2002, it was very safe to say it was time to replace this lock. I gingerly locked and unlocked it each day, prolonging its life as best I could. You remember that part about me being frugal, right? But, with all of the in and out, opening and closing of that door through the first two days of the re-pipe project, by the time I was closing up shop that second afternoon, my lock was done for. There would be no more ginger-ness - it was time to replace it.
Wanting to keep the same keys, I did a Google search for a locksmith and the top search yielded a small, local operation that had some really great reviews. The reviews all said that the proprietor of this locksmith company was a young guy, but that he really knew his stuff. My Friday afternoon call to this locksmith was promptly answered and I set an appointment for Monday afternoon, following what would be day five of the six-day re-pipe project.
The locksmith did ask that I go ahead and purchase the locks I wanted him to install, but he was able to tell me over the phone the exact replacements I needed because my locks were no longer made. In fact, he was a little surprised I was still using locks that old, but said he could make quick work of rekeying the new locks to my existing key.
So, Saturday sees the first day of drywall repair, Sunday sees a day off from home refurbishment, and Monday sees me working from home in my holed up spot again. Then, Monday afternoon, just as scheduled, there is a knock on the front door, and standing there is a skinny, scrawny little guy that looks like he could still be a college student, with his locksmith license in a lanyard badge around his neck, wearing shorts and a T-shirt that says “Locksmith” on it. If you had seen this kid walking down the street, you’d have thought he was going home to do his homework.
I invite him in and after some small talk, he sets to work on rekeying the locks I had purchased. Just as he said he would, he made quick work of it, explaining to me that he installed the new locking doorknob and deadbolt I purchased, but did not swap out the strike plates in the door frame because with the door frame being sheet metal, the strike plates I already had were a much better option than the ones that came with the knob and deadbolt. He showed me how the deadbolt was hitting the strike plate a bit, but said he would modify it as needed so it would be a much better fit.
After modifying the strike plate and reinstalling it, the job was done. It took a little over half an hour, and I was amazed at how well this young tradesman had breezed through the work. I asked him what I owed him, he produced a price list, and then quoted me a price that I thought to be very reasonable and fair for the job he did. I paid him cash, told him to keep the $5 in change I was due, and he then proceeded to tell me that since he had some time to spare before his next call, if I wasn’t too busy, that he would show me something about my front door lock that I should be concerned about.
He then proceeded to show me that my front door lock, being almost 20 years old now, predated a security feature that prevents a thief from making a make-shift key that would unlock my front door with just this key and a quick, carefully placed tap. He demonstrated the maneuver for me on a spare lock he kept just for demonstration purposes as to not do any damage to my lock. And after showing me this extremely easy trick that someone could use to unlock my door, he offered to fix it for me for free since he had the time and I had been such a good customer.
This young tradesman not only put in the security measure necessary to keep my lock from opening with a makeshift key, but also proceeded to tell me that when he was cleaning my front door lock, also free of charge, he noticed the original construction pins were still in the lock. He said that this was a concern because somewhere out there could be a storage facility from the original builder of my house that held a key that would open my front door. He then told me that I no longer needed to worry about that, though, because in addition to adding the new security measure and cleaning my lock for free, he also removed the construction pins as well. He said the chances of the original construction company key surfacing were low, but even if it did happen now, the key would no longer open the door. I had a very experienced commercial locksmith out in 2002 that rekeyed that very same lock for me and never mentioned any of this to me.
With my front door lock cleaned and refurbished, as well as more strongly secured than when he arrived, this young tradesman thanked me for my business and went on to his next call. As I closed the door and began to clean up the house from that day’s re-pipe work, I could not help but think back to the guy with the sign – who was bigger, stronger, taller, and more fit than either me or my new locksmith friend, though the locksmith and the guy with the sign definitely seemed to be about the same age.
Two young Americans – one already an experienced tradesman, knowledgeable and a credit to his profession who was running his own business – and one sitting on an empty crate on the corner of the Walmart parking lot with a sign, begging for money. You say that I am not supposed to compare these two young men to each other, and I say not comparing them does the biggest disservice imaginable to this country, our people, our children, and these two young men.
Photo via Pexels
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