As any manager or politician can tell you, you’re not important unless you tell other people what to do. Scientists, engineers, mechanics, and other people who work with their hands are all interchangeable.
God, it feels that way.
As a mere sprout reading my Dad's Popular Mechanics, I recall the fullpage ad, black and white, grainy and gritty, of clenched hands dramatically lit on perfect black background: "the future belongs to those who are willing to get their hands dirty."
I described this ad, and its sentiment, to a salaryman manager type in my salaryman days. He smirked at me as if I had been wearing a clip-on tie. I never liked that guy anyway.
Instead of telling my sons that they should know how to change oil, sharpen a knife, keep a backhoe from falling into the hole dug with it, or turn an animal he shot into a stack of meat wrapped for the freezer, should I tell them they must master telling other men to do these things for them?
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