In college I used to go up to the Northwest Territories and work in a railway yard. The first day I was ever there, fresh from the south, the foreman handed me a set of keys and pointed me at a forklift truck and said, have you ever driven one of these before? I said no. Oh, well, he says, they just have a complicated stick shift. It'll take you a few minutes, then put those oil drums over there. What he didn't know was that I had never driven anything before (I had no drivers licence and no desire to drive). But did I tell him that? No. I went over to the truck, and decided that now was my time to learn how to drive. The truck was fairly armour plated anyway, except for the big forks. Luckily he had gone away. I proceeded to smash my way around a warehouse, sticking forks into god knows what, and finally, with the forks protruding, ran right over an empty oil barrel. Throughout all this, a crowd had begun to gather, with me looking real professional. Eventually, with everyone in hysterics, the foreman came back, and he walked over to me, looked at me with supreme contempt and said: "F******* college kids." No one ever let me forget it. We eventually became good friends, and I did survive, but no one ever let me forget it. Whenever I got on a forklift (and I got real good before the summer was over), everyone would duck and run for cover.
yours, Peter T.