Twit Kid

Sometimes the installers in the shop do night work since the city won't allow us to block traffic on a major street in the Loop during the day, so the guys will come in around 2 pm instead of 6 am. There's a lot of standing around and finding little piddly stuff for them to do until they start the night job. In many ways, they are like children: they get "into things" and make little messes.

I recently ordered a very, very, VERY large mesh banner for a client of mine. I have been working with this client on this particular banner for no fewer than 6 months. I have probably done 12 different designs, innumerable size changes, several site visits and surveys, and invested at least 40 real-time hours (both personally and in conjunction with other co-workers of mine). The client for some reason had to hire a structure engineer to make certain that the banner we were proposing to make wouldn't damage the building or the balcony railings onto which we were proposing to attach it. We finally, finally, FINALLY got approval last week, so I reviewed all the details with my boss and then placed the order.

We got the banner.

Imagine this montrous thing: 90 FEET high and 11 FEET wide, unfurled on a shop floor. Imagine no less than 6 installers, 1 foreman, and ME, standing around it, looking at it, quizzically, as if it were an ancient, foreign language to be deciphered.

"How the fuck are we supposed to put this thing up?"

"Why did you get it ordered like this?"

"Who's bright fucking idea was it to put the grommets [the metal rings through which one attaches a banner to some structure] there?"

"We can't put this up! There's no way!"

"Someone's going to get KILLED!"

So then they listened to my explanation: how my boss, the client, the construction company, the engineer and myself all agreed as to how we were planning on installing this behemoth.

"That'll never work!"

"Impossible! IMPOSSIBLE!!!"

They plead with me.

"Can we drill into the building?"

"Can we use cables?"

"Can we weight the bottom?"

"Can we...can we...can we...?!?"

I breathed. Calmly. I spoke.

"I don't care what you do. All I know is that we have to protect the building and the railings from any damage. They are EXTREMELY concerned about this. They hired an engineer to figure out where it would be best to attach this thing. So glue it, wire it, paint it, screw it, cable it, nail it, stick it...whatever. I don't care. Just please don't damage the building."

"Can we...can we...can we?!?"

"I don't care."

I then walked back to my office.

I probably came off like a total dick, but what am I going to do?

These guys all have years (from 5 to 25) of experience with signs: installing them, building them. I have worked for sign companies in one capacity or another for about 8 years now, on the OTHER side of the equation: designing them, pricing them, selling them, ordering them, drawing them. So you know what that means?

I have no idea how to put up this fucking banner. No idea.

Sure, I can use words like "turnbuckle" and "stringer" and "neoprene." And I even know what they mean. (Sort of.) But I can't APPLY them to real-life situations. Because I don't know what I'm doing!

Look, I was a fucking ENGLISH major in college, you know? I read Chaucer and shit! I read Dante's Inferno in my FREE TIME. I wrote poems about poetry. About POETRY! Did you know that at least half the poems out there are about poetry? Well, I do! And they are! It's ridiculous!

I composed long-ass, self-important papers on Gustav Mahler and Wallace Stevens and how Richard Wagner's concept of the leitmotif is the template for all American film music! And I enjoyed it! I willingly took classes called "Love & Romance in Ancient Greek & Rome" and would have done well in them if the prof wasn't such a fucking snore.

I'm a big, giant twit and I'm about to have a big, giant twit kid. (Sorry, Kid.) S/he won't know which end's the business end on a screwdriver (at least from me) but, man, s/he'll have heard all Bach's Flute Partitas by the time s/he's 7 years old! (So s/he's got that going for him/her. Which is nice.) In all honesty, my wife is roughly 10,000 times more "handy" than I am, God bless her. And you know what? I'm totally comfortable with that. I don't feel any less of a man. I really don't.

But now I'm this fish out of water here at work sometimes. It's like bringing me to Home Depot: I'm surrounded by a bunch of loud, expensive things with sharp edges and I have no idea what 99.7% of them are for. I just want to find my infinitessimally tiny item and go home.

So don't ask me how to put up a banner. I have no idea. You wanna talk about some Viola de Gamba Sonatas, though? Well! Then I'm your man.