Ya see, the young man comes in and he don’t know nothin’. That’s a given.

Well, not precisely nothin’. He knows all sorts of things. It’s just that everything he knows isn’t so, or ain’t worth a fart in a whirlwind to know. Useless.

But a young man ain’t born useless. You got to make him so. A young man is born to be a boon to his fellow man and a credit to his parents, if his parents don’t pay too much attention to him and ruin him. Let him be.

They come all in here, extravagant of hair but miserly with manners. They want to start right in being something. Son, you’re an unthrowed pot. Stand up straight and listen.

You see, you ain’t born knowing, and you can’t learn it in a book. How you gonna know to put fabric softener in the steam box to make the oak come out of there real withy and limber? Your grammar school teacher don’t tell you that out there in the real world you gotta use the ceiling for a brace for the inner stem while you make down the bolt.

Oh the smart ones come in, though, not as often as you’d like but often enough, and just remind you how dumb you were when you were their age. They’re young and handsome and clever and the whole world stretches out to their horizon. You’re already on the horizon and you know it. And you think to yourself how wise that boy is to come in here and stand up straight there with the wrong clothes and a box of the wrong tools, and not enough of them, and his hands like his momma’s –smart enough to say “I don’t know nothin’ but I’m willing to learn if you’ll show me.”

That boy knows everything.