Don’t judge a book….
One day a man I didn’t know came into the shop on an exploratory quest to find out exactly how a bronze sculpture is created. He had read several articles on the subject, had bought some sculpting clay, and had sculpted a small, rudimentary rendition of a Buffalo Soldier.
I spent some time with him explaining the foundry process and showing him through the shop. He was a good listener, but he had little to say, and most of his side of the conversation seemed to be a regurgitation of what I had just explained, and asking seemingly simplistic questions.
When he departed, several staff members, having heard parts of our conversations, shook their heads and asked me who he was and what that was all about. To this day I regret my snarky response to their inquiries, “Yeah, not the brightest bulb on the tree.”
In the ensuing months he came in several more times. Although he was very stoic and not particularly communicative, he listened well and the quality of his sculptural efforts showed dramatic improvement. At one point he finally decided that one of his clay sculptures was good enough that he would have us cast it in bronze.
He was quite pleased with the finished product and proceeded to create more sculpture. One day he came in and I notice a change in his countenance. He seemed “down” and distracted and I asked him about it.
He replied that he had just come from an exam at the University of Arizona, and he was not pleased with his performance.
“Blew it, huh,” I commented.
“Oh, no …. I passed it all right. But I studied for it in German and the test was given in Arabic.”
…. Drop mic! Needless to say I was dumfounded. I pressed him further and learned that he was a military interrogator stationed at Fort Huachuca, and that he was conversant in SIX languages and dialects!
Here stands I, who gets by on a smidgen of border Spanish, and has difficulty navigating his own American English. I’m the guy who labeled this brilliant man standing in front of me as, “Not the brightest bulb on the tree.”
Humbling lesson.
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