Is there something going on with the road widening project on Blackjack Road that I should know about? I only ask because the road doesn’t seem to be getting any wider. In fact, at the traffic light where Locksley Way intersects with Blackjack, the road has actually gotten narrower. Where there once were two lanes for traffic and one for turning, only the two traffic lanes remain. So, what’s happened to the construction (I use the term loosely since it’s been at least two months since I saw anything even remotely resembling construction going on)? Did the funds for this project run out? Or did the powers that be decide that the road was just fine the way it is and divert the money elsewhere?
I’m actually not as concerned as I sound. I don’t really care that much about the width of the road. It’s annoying when traffic backs up because of the lack of turn lanes, but I can live with that. In fact it’s not the road that I’m writing about today at all; it’s the construction crew that kept me so entertained during my otherwise drab morning commute last semester. I miss those men and women in their hard hats. They were a source of inspiration to me, and may have changed the course of my life.
I’ve thought about several different career paths during my life, but until I was inspired by the construction crew, I had settled on medicine. Of course, I want to help people and save lives, but I also (and I’m not ashamed to admit it) have a bit of a mean streak. I’m not saying that if I were a doctor, I would abuse my power unnecessarily, but what’s the use of having power if you don’t have a little fun with it?
Think about it-doctors get away with all kinds of stuff just because they’re doctors. Your doctor tells you to do something that you wouldn’t do for anyone else on earth, but you do it because he’s a doctor, and he must know what’s best, right? I think that the majority of things that you are asked to do in a hospital setting have no real medical significance and are merely for the amusement of mean spirited physicians.
“OK, Mr. Jones, I’d like you to slip out of your warm clothes and put on this ridiculous and revealing paper gown. Next, take this medication, that’s right, the tube with “hemorrhoid cream” printed in large face bold type. Now head on down the hall, passing as many people as possible in the process, to Nurse Brown, who will give you instructions on applying the cream in as loud a voice as she can manage. Then, because I can, I would like to announce your embarrassing condition over the hospital PA system.”
I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so there is a very real possibility that I will never make it to medical school. For a long time I wondered what other careers would allow me to practice cruel control over other people for my own amusement. Last semester, I found it.
If I can’t be a doctor, I think I’d like to be a member of a road construction crew. Nearly everything these guys did last semester seemed to be deliberately aimed at making other people suffer, and no one complained too much for the same reason we don’t tell our doctors where they can stick it. (No pun intended, but it happened anyway.)
The average person doesn’t understand road construction and therefore doesn’t question any of the abuses heaped on them by the crew. Actually, from the looks of the road, I doubt that anyone on the crew understood road construction either, but they did share my penchant for abusing power.
The guys I was so awed by were the two holding the reversible stop/slow signs. I swear there was more than one occasion when they were both showing the “Stop” side to traffic at the same time. Many times when I passed them after being held up while absolutely nothing was happening on the road, I saw the smirks on their faces-smirks that seemed to say, “I have an orange vest and a stop sign, and you don’t. I control your destiny. I decide whether you get to class on time. I can hold you here forever if I want. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
Who says power doesn’t corrupt? What were these guys doing out so early every morning, if they weren’t out to make other folks lives miserable? I never saw them working during the middle of the day. They always seemed to pick the high-traffic times to roll some piece of heavy equipment out into the middle of the road and act as though the entire project hung on whether the bulldozer backed into position just right. I often saw a couple of guys moving around the construction site slowly, as men who know that they are being paid by the hour tend to do. These guys carried radios and coordinated the entire fiasco.
“Uh … yeah, Dewey, this here’s L.C. Listen son, we’ve still got a few cars getting through up here on the east end. I need you to send another dozer and one of them boys with the stop signs ASAP.”
Enron proved that big business is a bad place to practice the abuse of power. The medical field is still a good choice, but it’s really tough to get into because you have to be smart as well as mean. Plus, there’s probably a requirement that says that you must keep a straight face while abusing people. Road construction may be the best bet. Like medicine, you get all the chances to use your power to manipulate others at your whim, but you don’t have to be that bright, and you’ll never have to worry about sticking your hands in gross places.