Tongue And Groove

Yesterday, I attended a summertime picnic sponsored by the local offices of a global company. The company operates almost exclusively in researching and designing technological products so I was surprised to see some of the people walking around using disposable film cameras instead of digital cameras. Perhaps they were afraid of damaging or losing their digital cameras. I wondered also if there is a hidden trend among non-digital camera users. I thought about the possibilities to put me to sleep the way some people count sheep.

What about you? A reader recently asked me about a problem she had. She told me that in her work life, other people are behaving in ways that jeopardize her job (they put up a petition about something related to her work as a leader - I don't have more details than that). Missing my advice to never work in a job because you have to, she needs this job and can't afford to lose it; she also enjoys the work and her colleagues in the office. She wanted to know what she should do to discourage the petitioners.

Well, I don't have any ready answers for her (except, perhaps that freedom of speech is a fundamental right of our species when engaged in civil discourse). However, I do have some wisdom to share with her from my deceased grandfather.

When I was a little boy visiting my grandparents on their farm, my grandfather took me out into his garage workshop to show me some of his woodworking tools. His World. You know what I mean. Some of us have a place we call our own, a place where we could perform our tasks with our eyes closed and one hand tied around behind our backs (for those of you who are blind or missing limb(s), I apologize if the reference offends you but it's an old one from my youth that applies to someone like me with a fully functioning body - you get what I mean, I'm sure).

Pa-Paw thrived in that workshop. He showed me how he kept screws, nuts and bolts separated by nailing jar lids to a piece of wood which he hung from the ceiling - he then kept the metal parts in glass jars and screwed the jars up into the lids (small jars/lids for small metal parts and large jars/lids for large metal parts) so he could look up for the parts he needed for a woodworking project. It kept his workbench neat and free from clutter.

In the case of my reader, my grandfather showed me another trick, how to mate two pieces of wood together to give them a strong joint without resorting to using nails, screws, nuts, bolts or glue. Something he called tongue and groove.

Keep in mind that in popular culture at the time, the word "groove" meant having a certain attitude, a style of walking or a style of dancing so when I heard my grandfather speak, I thought he meant that "tongue and groove" was a colloquial expression for the way a man spoke and carried on in public. I was impressed that my grandfather was teaching me, a boy of about six to eight years of age, how to conduct himself as a grownup. My ears and eyes were focused completely on what he was about to say.

"Now, see here, this is a router. Routers cut patterns in wood. You can combine a jigsaw and a router to make decorative interlocking pieces of wood like that jigsaw puzzle you and your Ma-Maw are working on in the house."

"Huh?"

"What's that, young man? You have to speak up. I don't have my hearing aids in."

"What's a router and a jigsaw got to do with getting your tongue and groove on?"

"You don't put a tongue and groove on. You route it in. Here, let me show you. Get that two by four over there and bring it over here."

"What's a two by four?"

"That long piece of wood on top of the stack over there."

I looked across the room where he was pointing and all I saw were stacks and stacks of wood, length not being a feature that made one piece stand out from another. I saw colors like honey, walnut shell, manila folder, and mustard yellow. I saw black streaks made by oil or burning. I walked over and picked up a piece about as long as my arm that had interesting tree ring growth patterns on it and a big eye in the middle made by a knot or tree branch outlet.

"Well, Rick, that's not the piece I wanted but it will do. So put it on the workbench and I'll show you how to clamp it down."

My grandfather proceeded to show me how to secure the piece of wood against the side of the workbench and then he pulled a metal bit out a of drawer and attached it to a portable router. He cut a short groove in the wood and then had me hold the router and cut a short groove of my own. From there, he took me to a section of the workshop where he kept his finished pieces and demonstrated to me how a piece of wood with a tapered protruding edge, the tongue, fit into a piece of wood with a recessed edge, the groove. He showed me a small chest of drawers he'd made with multiple tongue and groove joints as well as a drawer made with dovetail joints. He explained to me when to use glue and when to use graphite or lubricating oils between joints, based on the type of wood used and its expansion properties. He stressed that wood and metal are not good for joints so avoid nails or screws unless you were attaching decorative hardware like drawer pulls or mirror mounts.

Now how is all that related to a person's fear of losing her job because of a petition? I'm not a parablist (is that such a word?) who ends a story with some vague reference and pretends to be all-knowing or wise. I'm not the wise one here in this tale - my grandfather is. My grandfather demonstrated to me that we learn by doing. We share. We accept one person's view of another object even if it differs from one's own (the definition of a piece of wood, for example) and keep our eye on what's important. The same goes for the reader and her question. A petition is an opportunity to share, to accept others' views and to stay focused on what's important. My advice, such as it is, is for the reader to demonstrate to others the many ways in which petitions are useful, turning the petitions into a learning experience for all involved, and of course, let her boss know what she's doing, in case the sudden appearance of several petitions on the intranet/Internet gets the boss a bit concerned.