The Slow Progress

For all that my lab partners and I lacked, we paled in comparison to the others. At least the cumulative sum of ages in our group added up to an number worthy of trust in the eyes of Brad. He could see right away that we exorcised a certain amount of responsibility and willfulness. This in spite of the fact that one of our members was trying hard to hide a history of unlawful acts. One day when there was a tour of the shop for new, perspective students, a tour attendee looked directly at John and asked, "So, can people who have been in jail come to this school, too?"
"Why the hell would she look and me and ask that?" John complained later. There was absolutely nothing that indicated to any observer that he had been incarcerated or slapped with a felony. Yet, she had looked right at him when posing the question to the tour guide. His forlorn expression following this stint foreshadowed the long road ahead and the battle he was fighting to make a honest name for himself. Still, he simply shrugged and carried on, educating our small unit and carrying us beyond our classmates.

In the far bays, the other groups struggled. Stripped of the older, wiser and more intent members, they were left to rely on a book, a computer program and Brad's snippets of feedback. Additionally, new class members would strangely appear and further dilute the other groups' knowledge base. The arrival of a student in the middle of a class term was not supposed to occur, but the dwindling attendance signaled problems for the class's continuation. The danger posed by this equation was obvious. The new members not only slowed the progress of everyone else, as educating them took time, but the heavy work that was occurring inside the garage was now being done by people who were being guided by students already blurry on the exact science of auto repair.

The eventual scenario resulted in an abnormally large group of students that was a morphing together of several other groups. The shop became a construction zone where ten people stood watching while one or two others wriggled loose large chunks of metal and wires around waterfalls of cascading oils and coolant. Brad seemed to have lost the energy necessary to redistribute students into their original placements and thus a number of students became listless and merely watched and copied information in order to pass the class. So low became the level of expectation that some of the younger members would sneak away in the middle of class to the strip-bar parking lot across the street and smoke dope with the valet from the club. They would return with their eyes red and lips covered in potato chip crumbs. From the lot they would make a beeline to their lab vehicles and with a new sense of confidence and clarity, implement large and imposing air tools to cut away rusty bolts and nuts while their safety glasses dangled from their pockets.

Often, I would read my book on the other side of the garage and cast an eye in the direction of the stoned students laughing and groping at the guts of their car. But, after a time, it became equally amusing to join in with the group of observers gathered around the vehicle and wait for the eventual injury that was sure to occur.