an odd bit of wisdom.

Growing up as I did in the pre-Internet age, I learned to program in grade school, but then found a complete lack of documentation for every system I tried after that. I didn't like it enough to type, then hand-write, then re-type hundreds of lines of code every time, so after I'd exhausted every futile permutation of "SAVE FILE" on every kind of computer I had access to, I stopped.

In high school, I discovered I fit in, or as close as I'd ever come to that point, with the theater folks. A strange and alien species at the time.

A couple of the older students there described getting some stage experience by showing up to work on load-ins/load-outs for summer concerts at the local amusement park. To this day, I have no idea what exactly they had done, because I called ahead and people were like "lol no." I did somehow make my way to the professional theater in town, and I thought I was volunteering, but they paid me, which was a nice surprise. So I met professionals for the first time.

The first shock was destroying an entire set and throwing it away. Not the kind of abstract minimalist sets you build when you're combining artistry and thrift, either, made of eminently reusable platforms and walls. This was the interior of some Victorian or Gilded Age mansion, with moldings carved from styrofoam, and the sort of paint jobs that make you realize that scenery painters are just working with this whole higher skillset that, rightly or wrongly, gets almost no use in real buildings.

This was also the first time I'd ever even heard of the aptly-named "sawzall," let alone seen them deployed with such joy and abandon. Cutting down piles of cheap softwood filled with nails and screws is really where they shine, especially if someone else is buying the blades. "Sometimes Mike brings in his chainsaw," said Peter the Technical Director.

The TD runs the tech side of the theater: scene shop, lights, sound. In smaller theaters, they often take on design work, as well. They usually have a vast amount of experience in all things theater-tech, and they're in charge, so, as happened one day, they're who you go to when something goes wrong and you Need An Adult™. A journeyman carpenter--not growing up around the trades, this was also the first time I learned that "journeyman" was still a real thing--screwed up.

Peter didn't miss a beat. "Oh, yeah," he said. "Just cut a new miter block on the radial arm saw, and toe-screw it in."

Someone chimed in, "Wait--didn't we screw this up on the last show, too?".

"Sure," said Peter. "We keep making the same mistakes, but we get better and better at fixing them."