This afternoon, we made it back from Ojai in time for Nate’s All Stars soccer practice. It was a beautiful, warm afternoon and I offered to help put the goal together with one of the dads. We found ourselves staring at approximately 15 metal tubes with various colors of tape our coach had used to try and make it easier to put together. Blue, red, yellow, brown, black. There were numbers on stickers, sometimes. There was more blue tape than any other color. The other dad jumps in and starts building.
I say, “So… are you an engineer?”
“Yep.”
“Hmmm, then this is right up your alley. What kind?”
“Mechanical.”
“Terrific. And you said you work at the nuclear power plant? Then this should easy, right? You tell me what to do.”
Some time passes and we’re having moderate success figuring it out. And then I say, “I come from a long line of people that put black tape over blinking electrical clocks, rather than attempting to program them.”
And my joke does not land with the mechanical engineer…