Slow children playing grow up to be slow men working. As they are expected to be hit by cars in their youth the populace cares little about whether they actually make it to adulthood or not. When they do become slow men working they only prevent you from getting to work on time. They amble in the center of the work zone unfazed by the fact that you have not had your third cup of coffee this morning or that you are still not convinced that your pants are in fact navy as your wife said and not black as you remembered them. When provoked by your speeding slow men working tend to lash out with belly roars, throwing chain saws, or words that should not be heard over the hum of the jackhammer. This only makes you call into their supervisors and complain that your tax dollars are going towards four idiotic men standing in the road watching one slow man working. You swear into your dash board whenever you see the orange sails lining the shoulder of the road. Upstate New York has two seasons, winter and construction. Snow you know how to deal with.
I am a teenage girl, and I am a construction worker. Whenever adults ask me about my summer job they question my sanity, and even that of my parents. “How could you let her work at a job like that?” You don’t care that I stand on the blistering black top all day or that cars often attempt to drive through me in their haste. You care that I am surrounded and influenced by the societal scum that are slow men working. Those idiots you mock and generally look down upon, yes, they are slow men working, however, they are my slow men working. I am writing this, not to defend their actions or to sway your snobbish opinions. I am writing this because I have infiltrated their world and what I have found is more miraculous than Jane Goodall and her chimps or Gregor Mendel and his peas. The interesting bit is that none of what I have found should have been surprising; it was something that I should have found in my colleagues, in my family, in the media that I am immersed in not always by choice. There should have never been a need for it to be found. But there was. Please, let me show you what I have found thanks to my slow men working.
