The Strange World of Engineering

I worked this summer, as the last two summers for the Cowlitz County Public Works back home. The only difference was that this summer, instead of working for the road crew, I worked in the Engineering office. This was a very different experience for me, to be inside all of the time and have so much time on my hands. So I read. I read everything I didn't read for class last semester, everything I wanted to read, and things and I knew I needed to read but didn't want to. Eventually my coworkers realized that all I ever did was read so they would ask me about what I was reading and I would tell them everything. The good, the bad and the amazing.

After 3 months of this, they not only realized that I was an English major (and thus not qualified to work in an engineering office) but also wanted to know what classes I was taking in the fall. I told them: womens studies, history methods, english methods, exceptional children, and a nabokov class. As soon as I said the last, they all would say: "hey, isn't he that pervy Russian who wrote the dirty book about little girls?" I would say, yes, he wrote Lolita, but really it's not just about that, it's about the pervy old man. And they were all horrified that I had read it before. (what they must think of you Dr. Sexson!) I tried for weeks to explain to them that it was about so much more than a pedophile, it was about love and America. We had many arguments about this, and in the end I lost. They never did believe me.

I'm not sure what this shows. That you can't change the mind of someone set in their ways, even if they have never read the work? That people with preconceived notions cannot be changed by one blonde girl? I really don't know, but perhaps the conversation that we had will help them to think about things in a different way. Probably not though.