Now that I've got a little girl on the way, I find I spend a lot of time thinking about teaching.
I'm going to have this whole little person to mold and teach. I didn't even have to apply for a license or anything.
I want to make sure I get it right.
So I spend a lot of my free time just imagining interactions between Eliana and me. I try to imagine things I know she needs to know, but that school will never teach her. I thought about interactions in which I taught her about personal responsibility, self-reliance, the importance of private property, and so on.
Then I started thinking: what things have I learned in my life that absolutely shocked me? What things did I encounter that I was absolutely unprepared for? And how could I best prepare my daughter for those things?
And then I remembered The Light Bulb Incident. And it occurred to me that it will be impossible to prepare my daughter for all the bullshit that will come her way. Because new bullshit is being invented all the time, even while old bullshit never goes away.
The Light Bulb Incident involves labor unions.
When I left home, I was only peripherally aware of the concept of labor unions. I had seen Norma Rae, but all seeing that movie had done was give me the idea that labor unions are good and people who oppose them are bad. I had never actually interacted with one, or with the members of one.
But there came a time, when I was working for the University of Florida, when I happened upon a burned-out light bulb.
I went to my supervisor, and said "Dr. X, there is a burned-out light bulb in the other room. Please tell me the location of the spare light bulbs in order that I may replace it and bring illumination back to those of us who toil for you."
That's when Dr. X informed me that replacing light bulbs was a union job and that not only was I not allowed to change the light bulb, but I could actually be fired for changing it.
I was 18 years old at the time and, of course, thought that I knew everything. I began to argue with Dr. X about the absurdity of not being able to change the light bulb. I pointed out that it was inefficient, that it kept me from doing my job until such time as the bulb was changed, etc., etc. Dr. X, having worked for bureaucrats for many years, just smiled and told me that every young lab assistant that came through his doors had the same reaction whenever they encountered a sacred union job for the first time. He told me that it wasn't worth thinking about and that I should simply put in a request to get the bulb changed and forget about it.
Head hung low, I went to the office and filled out the form that requested a change of light bulb. Then I took Dr. X's advice and tried to forget about it.
Unfortunately, I had to work in the room with the burned-out light bulb, so I was reminded of the whole incident every time I walked in there.
Three days later, I got another harsh dose of reality when the crack light bulb changing team showed up to change the light bulb. I'm sure that, somewhere, there's a joke about "how many union members does it take to change a light bulb?" At the University of Florida, apparently, the answer is "3". One to climb up the ladder and perform the actual changing, one to hold the ladder, and a third to observe the whole process. It took the team 15 minutes to change the light bulb. First, they had to identify the bulb in question. Next, they had to test the bulb -- by flipping the switch on and off -- repeatedly until they were satisfied that it was, indeed, burned out. Finally, they had to set up the ladder properly and perform the changing procedure.
I count at least seven people involved in light bulb changing in this story: me, Dr. X, the girl in the office with whom I filed the light bulb change request form, whoever the form went to after that, and the three crack light bulb changing team members. And I'm probably missing 2 or 3 entire levels of bureaucracy in that count.
I hope one day I get a chance to tell this story to my daughter, but I can't really conceive of a situation in which it might be relevant. But I really hope I find one so that I can inoculate her to one more thing before she has to go out into the big bad world.