I Don't Wanna Look!

With the advent of the New Year around the corner, I have been spending a fair amount of time reflecting on not only the last year, but on my life in general. Some of the memories I could happily do without if I’m being completely honest. Altogether though, I have had a blessed life and am able to look back fondly, ever aware of the trappings of nostalgia.

One of the memories that sprouted up for no initially obvious reason was from my mid-twenties when I worked as a laborer, pouring concrete walls. I worked on a crew for a period of six or seven months that was composed of an eclectic group of personalities that comingled in just such a way as to be almost contrived. What I mean is that the way we interacted together felt like we had been cast by a particularly clever comedic director. That’s not to say that we all got along. We certainly had our share of conflict, but the conflict was measured enough to avoid coming to blows, just by the scruffy hairs on our chins.

One of the peculiar aspects of human interaction that I have seen time and again in my own life, is that shared suffering bonds you to your fellow sojourners. I won’t belabor the point here, but I think it is a critically important element of humanity. It manifests itself in so many aspects of our lives that it would not be too heretical to say it is the most definitive element of human bonding. After all, what makes a family so close, if not the shared experience of overcoming obstacles together? Why do you think the family is always a focus of attack from totalitarians?

 The specific memory that came to mind, before I wander off too far from my intended course, was of a hot summer day. I won’t bore you with too much detail about the job of a concrete laborer, but I will give you enough information for a workable context. Essentially, we used eight foot tall aluminum forms that were thirty-two inches wide. They were held together by steel pins, wedges, and ties. The concrete is poured into the forms like a rectangular Jell-O mold. After the concrete sets, you have to strip the forms off, leaving you with a concrete wall. It starts with a big hole being excavated and the walls are formed up in that excavation. Those walls serve as the foundation of a house or a commercial building. After the concrete would set, we would have to strip the heavy forms off the exterior and interior of the wall and place them back into the racks from which they came, so that they could be used at the next jobsite. Downright riveting, I know, but stay with me.

On this hot and brutal day, my co-workers and I were stripping a wall. I was up on the wall with my co-worker, Douggie, pulling forms off the exterior of the wall and tossing them to another co-worker, Joe, so that he could place them back in the rack. If by chance, you might happen to put one of the forms in the rack backwards, because you’re tired or in a hurry, they will not fit, and you will have to pull them all back out and start over wherever you made your mistake. We had all done this at one point or another and it was humiliating and terrible because it’s very physically demanding and a real rookie mistake.

That day, Joe was hot, tired, distracted, and honestly a little hungover. He made the aforementioned mistake right at the beginning of a new rack and didn’t notice it until the last form would not fit. Douggie saw this and sighed deeply before turning to me and cracking what can only be accurately described as a shit-grin. Pardon my language. We nodded at each other and hopped down into the hole to help pull the rack apart and restack it. Shared suffering breeds that kind of camaraderie. You might be thinking how nice that was of us. Sure, it was nice, but another aspect of shared suffering and labor-intensive work is a fair amount of ribbing. As we approached the rack, Joe tensed up, anticipating the inevitable.

Douggie did not disappoint. He pointed theatrically at the rack and yelled, “Look what you did! Look at it!” Joe’s face turned three shades of red and he shouted back with all the dignity of a toddler caught stealing cookies, “I don’t wanna look!”

It’s entirely possible that I peed a little in my pants. We were laughing so hard at poor Joe’s expense that we were unable to compose ourselves for several minutes. That memory is burned into my mind and still makes me laugh to this day, even as I am writing  this. It was so absurd and petulant that it took us completely by surprise. Hopefully, you are still with me. I appreciate your indulgence. There is a point to all this, I promise.

Sometimes, it is the most seemingly mundane events in life that lead us to the most profound realizations. Douggie, with his pointing and blaming, and Joe, with his petulance and denial, were beautifully simple demonstrations of human psychology. As I sit in my favorite coffee shop and recall this incident, it resonates with me, deeply.

 Joe had somewhat carelessly done something in a rush that had relatively harmless consequences. He didn’t want to make more work for anyone, including himself, but he was tired, and hot, and hungover. It was a specific set of circumstances that led to an imprudent action that he certainly knew would be costly. Due to his condition, he was ill-equipped to think it through. As he hollered back at Douggie, “I don’t wanna look!”, he momentarily was incapable of accepting his mistake. His pride was hurt more than anything and facing the consequences of his mistake while abiding the harsh ridicule of his co-workers was a tad too much for young Joe that fateful day.

Over the last few years, we have seen a very similar situation play out with the pandemic. The “Joes”(or Karens as it were) of the world, were beaten down by fear and propaganda. They were coerced into abandoning loved ones and accepting ludicrous limits on their freedoms. They huddled in their homes, masked and afraid. They succumbed to hysterical acceptance of unproven medicine and shamed and condemned all who had the temerity to stop and question the wisdom of such measures. They were trying to do the right thing and got carried away by the tide of resentment and fear that permeated the media.

Now that the dust has begun to settle, the evidence is clear that the prescribed methods of dealing with the stressors we faced, was faulty at best and downright criminal at worst. I believe we are witnessing a realization of those mistakes in many. Of course, this only applies to that percentage of the population capable of disengaging from their hypnosis, but it is a significant enough percentage to return life to some semblance of normalcy again.

Joe’s response to his mistake might have been very different if Douggie and I would have quietly and politely climbed down into the hole and kindly helped him restack the rack with words of assurance and affirmation. As hilarious as the whole thing was to me, pointing at the rack and yelling, “Look what you did! Look at it!”, was the most traumatizing aspect of the incident for Joe. It might behoove us to remember poor Joe and his inability to cope with his mistake, largely because of the way we reacted to it. It might also behoove us all to climb quietly down into the hole and start rebuilding our communities and relationships. After all, the work has to be done and the Joes and the Karens of the world will be much less likely to yell, “I don’t wanna look!” if they are granted some measure of grace.

You are valued, you are loved, and you are worthy,

God Bless and Goodnight.

The subtlecain Podcast