No Engineer

I got a Lego set for Christmas when I was nine. After I took it to my room and started to build a home, I realized quickly I knew shit about using the blocks. I had no concept of overlapping them to construct a building. My mother had to show me, a visual learner had to watch the process in order to create. It was the same year I built a fort. I placed pieces of wood side by side and again could not figure out how to make it stand or expand. To be fair, it was wood hauled out of the garbage, old cupboard doors and strapping. No one showed us, it was trial and error. Luckily the three seasons it survived it did not collapse in on us. We were children and it was lessons you learn along the way.

Why is it the creators of projects in communities seem to feel their way much like the nine year old girls we were? It seems every year the construction crews are out, redoing or reconfiguring projects that were completed. Is there no future thought put into these designs? You design a highway with no foresight to figure that you might need more than one lane, more off ramps, a culvert, a snow fence on straight stretches? What about pavement, can we not invent something that does not get slick in the winter, or tear up with plows in our horrible winters? When they are torn up, why does it take forever to fix them? Especially in rural areas? Do they matter less than our city dwellers? There is a washout on the side of a cliff that has never been touched except for cones since it happened! I remember a project in high school entitled; How to Pass a Bill. It listed all the steps to get something passed in Parliament, the process is elaborate! Getting the road fixed must be a similar process, because it sure takes forever!

I’m a dreamer and I am visual, so when something is designed it is pretty clear that some of these projects are designed with good intentions but no regard for the future. They did some beautification project in a town, planting trees. Trees grow and yet they planted them on the side of the road with the hydro lines! Trial and error I guess, or maybe they are thinking of the future, they will be needed in ten to twenty years to redo the work! I don’t know maybe plans are suppose to be for the immediate need and you are not suppose to consider the future? Kind of like childhood, remember the kids on their bikes, riding their hearts out, hands in the sky, before helmets were invented! “Look mom, no brains!” Really, I know nothing, I need a really elaborate pictures drawn to picture anything, I wouldn’t be able to do a job like that! Lately, tired is a noun, and I can barely plan out a meal!