"Meet Doug" by Rev. Thomas Schade

[Memos from Rev. Barbara Merritt and Rev. Tom Schade]

M I N I S T E R ‘ S   M E M O
“Meet Doug”

You should all meet Doug, the drywall instructor over at the Home Depot in
Shrewsbury. He’s been a contractor for years, and now manages several
departments there, including contractor services and tool rental. Last
Saturday morning, Doug met with most of the people going to Mississippi from
First Unitarian Church to give us a two-hour crash course in dry wall
installation.

Dry wall installation, as in “the process of attaching dry wall to the
inside of a house” is not a subject I have studied extensively. I somehow
missed that week in seminary. In fact, it is but a single chapter in the
great book of house construction which I have not read. I have not even been
on that floor of the library. All I know about house construction can be
summed up in one sentence: “I have lived in houses.” And I am grateful that
someone somewhere built them, and further, if needed, I am sure I could
compose a prayer of gratitude for their effort, their labor and their skill,
if I was ever called to do so at a banquet honoring homebuilders.

So when Doug started his lesson in dry walling, I did what I usually do when
faced with an unfamiliar situation. I drifted to the back of the room, and
acted like I already knew everything. “Oh yeah, dry wall. Sure, No sweat. No
problem. I’m cool with drywall.”

Like most people (or is it just men?), when faced with something I don’t
know, I just pretend that I already know it.

Some educators believe that the entire high school curriculum could be
completed in a single year, if students didn’t pretend that they knew it
already. College: six months. Graduate school: a weekend intensive workshop.
Some say that most of human culture – art, literature, poetry, philosophy,
theology, history, sculpture – is remedial education, trying to teach us
stuff that we pretend that we all ready know. (Any “facts” inferred from
this paragraph are not, in fact, “facts” in the narrow and rigid sense of
pieces of information known actually to be “true,” but merely possess a
certain plausibility and truthiness that makes them credible to the gullible
reader, for the purposes of humor only.)

Anyway, this is the sort of the stuff that I am thinking about as I loiter
in the back of the crowd, as Doug from Home Depot starts to explain “dry
walling.”

Fortunately, there are young and enthusiastic people in our group, and they
are willing to interact with Doug. They stick their fingers in the drywall
plaster. They go around with the plaster and stick some on everybody’s
hands. They pay close attention to Doug as he explains how the drywall
tapers at the edges. Who knew that? Doug shows them how to cut the drywall,
and how to screw it on, and how to tape the joints, and work the air bubbles
out of the plaster, so that it looks like cream cheese and not cottage
cheese. Doug shows them the tools they need, and the kinds of masks they
should wear and which way the paper side of the insulation should go. Doug
is magnificent, funny, informative, and engaging. Thanks to Doug, I come
away from the session reasonable assured that we will rise to any dry
walling challenge we will encounter.

The Youth group is leaving this Saturday morning for their trip. They will
be picked up by a bus at the church, go by bus to New York City and then
ride the Crescent City train to New Orleans. From there, on to Kiln
Mississippi and Camp Coastal Outpost, and the work. I will fly down and join
them on the 15th and come back with them on the train on the 21st. If
needed, I can be reached through the church office.

                              Tom

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