I had always wanted to take high school automotive class.
The course offerings were 2-hour blocks, but because I was on the “Academic Honors” track at my high-school I never had room in my schedule. The “Academic Honors” track was a track of “prestige” and required the more “sought-after” knowledge of fine arts and foreign languages. When the tracks were listed, it was always placed at the top as the more noble track to travel. At the bottom was the Core40 diploma, which included courses like Beginning Automotive and Building Trades.
My senior year, I finally had room to fit one of the “Core40” courses in my schedule and I could take Beginning Automotive. I remember when I told my father I was taking Beginning Automotive, his response was, “As long as you don’t grow up to be a damn grease monkey.”
My father had an image issue, and I was well aware of that. It wasn’t until a few years down the road that I realized I had inherited a piece of that.
In college, I was the captain of an SAE Baja racing team. In this league, college students around the world build an off-road go-kart and put it through an endurance-test-from-hell for four straight hours. It was on a trip from Michigan to a race in Washington that my image issue was brought into question.
A rumored DIY car project came up that was something of the nature of the "Trippy Hippy Van" project. I can’t remember what the project was exactly, but I remember it having a strong element of ridiculousness similar to the Trippy Hippy Van. If you aren’t familiar with the Trippy Hippy Van, it’s a van that drives down the road, on its side. Yes, the part of the vehicle that would typically have the sliding van door is on the bottom, facing the road directly, and the wheels that would normally be on the road are sticking up in the air on the ‘passenger’ side of the vehicle.
I remember commenting something along the lines of, “Why would someone spend the time on something like that? How is that practical?”
And our team adviser, a college professor, responded with, “People like to tinker. How they tinker is up to them. I can respect that.”
It was then that I realized my judgement of someone else’s free time, and more importantly, knowledge was disrespectful and I aspired to have the same level appreciation and respect that my professor had. I mean one could say, “Why take a group of college kids all the way to Washington from Michigan to test a vehicle they have spent hours and hours building to the point of failure? How is that practical?” They’d have even more of an argument if they knew that our vehicle was only going to make it one lap. Michigan to Washington and we got one... freakin’... lap completed in a four… hour… race.
What I essentially came to realize is that there is no hierarchy of knowledge. Had I deviated from the supposed “prestige” of an “academic honors” diploma in high school, I would have found my calling much sooner. Had I known to look at Trippy Hippy Vans with a level of respect, I may have found inspiration in my own ridiculous endeavors. And maybe that inspiration could have kept the car on the track longer than one… freakin’... lap.
In conversation on this topic, I began saying things along the lines of, “It doesn’t matter if you're a freakin’ expert on the Simpsons. That’s still knowledge and it’s no more or less important than my knowledge, her knowledge, or his knowledge.”
... Which is ironic because this essay is modeled after a format taught in the book Thank You for Arguing by Jay Heinrichs. Who, wait for it, frequently references dialogue from the Simpsons to help teach the reader about rhetoric and argumentative dialogue.
Educators and parents need to forget what they know about the most “important” courses and jobs and let our youths' knowledge grow more organically from their natural interests, if for nothing else, to model respect for the people with the supposedly “un-important” knowledge.
Who knows how much Simpsons expertise I’ve overlooked in the past and how much of it may have helped me go one extra lap?
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