When I was six or seven, I thought the best business idea in the world would be to make some cookies and a Thermos of hot chocolate, and take ‘em down to sell at construction sites.
Not to the workers, mind. The unexploited gold mine my seething little brain pinpointed, even at that young age, was all them guys who like to watch construction workers at work.
I like big trucks and earth movers too. You can catch me peeping through gaps in chipboard barriers around big holes in the ground. I have a fetish for cranes too. Big! Strong! Powerful! What’s not to love?
It’s not supposed to be in girl-DNA to be a truckist, but my little niece always seemed to be more attracted to zoom-zooms than stuffed animals – at least until someone introduced her to Dora the Explorer, and I mean, who can blame her for jumping the proverbial ship? Besides, Dora’s always on the go. Emma can have her Spanish lessons, her girl power, and her love of vehicles all in one.
Construction also means hassle, if your place is the one under construction. Take, well, me for example.
Last year was one big hot, dusty noisy, uncertain hell. Our landlord needed to replace the balconies on our 300 apartment building, and it was the work of about 14 months of pounding, bad smells, and loud shouting in foreign languages at seven in the morning.
I get the necessity, and the impossibility that major construction can happen without any loss of quality of life. But what I learned most over the extended war zone around what I had trouble thinking of as “Home Sweet Home” was that people, faced with construction of their own, lose their fascination and love to gripe.
Not that it’s not warranted to be put out when your home becomes a no-man’s-land of rubble and dead grass. Or when the carpenters move in all the tools to your kitchen, and promptly vanish. Or when you’ve paid in full for the replacement furnace that still hasn’t arrived, and you’re still, well, freezing.
It’s all part of the ebb and flow of benefit and responsibility that we are afforded so many lessons on during the course of our lives, I guess. Yes, it’s terrific to avoid the responsibility of mortgage payments in favor of renting — but that means that any repairs are done on someone else’s schedule. It’s terrific and freeing to have the privacy of your own home — but when the water mains break, it’s all down to you.
I can imagine that when a contractor gets a straight-ahead demolition, there’s a certain sense of relief. Before you even start, you get to rid the property of all those pesky, complaining humans that will never look on the bright side of inconvenience. Provided you don’t let the building fall on anyone else’s, you can pretty much do your job and go home.
It must be the same when you’re putting up a building from square one, unless of course you have a lot of over-anxious condo-buyers breathing down your neck to meet the completion date.
And instead of the complainers who are waiting to get their homes back, you’ll see just the usual complement of onlookers who are standing by the construction site not to complain, but to marvel at your grown-up toys and the majesty of walls coming tumbling down or going up.
You may even see me out there, with my little cart and my carafe of hot beverages and oatmeal cookies. If I haven’t franchised the business out.
For a true horror story of a landlord/tenant relationship, check out:
heather said,
July 26, 2008 at 4:51 am
ok – I’m gonna give it one more shot, and that’ll be it, since you seem to be posting again. Jen – do you remember me? Grade 9 at A.B. Lucas Secondary school. Name is Heather. I left after Grade 9 and moved to Ottawa. I’ve found some of your writings in a folder I’ve had for… well, lets see… 24 years I guess
Would love to get in touch with you if interested.