Just over a quarter-century ago, I was a college freshman employed by the theater department’s scene shop. Though I was a willing worker, surely no one would hire me to swing a hammer today, barring a deportation effort so vast that even MAGA minds are blown. What I did possess, in some abundance, was a personality that invited sarcasm from my superiors. I don’t recall what stupid question of mine provoked the following. I know only that a bit of folk wisdom nudged through the conversational thicket to change my life. 

“Never show an idiot unfinished work.” Perhaps I had asked why a scenery flat was unpainted or why the stage lights weren’t covering a particular actor’s mark. In any case, the shop foreman’s retort came down like a thunderbolt, if a thunderbolt could be said to drip with withering disdain. From that point forward, I kept my own counsel “in the office” and tried my best not to comment on projects underway. Yet, a new idea had become part of my mental architecture. In this instance, I had been the idiot. But wasn’t the world, after all, full of them?