“What are you doing?”
The question startled me out of my trance-like state. I was sitting on the floor of the forge classroom with a piece of iron ingot in each hand. Dad and I had arrived early to class this morning and I was seeing what information I could get from the field.
“Good morning, Tyler. How was your weekend?” He hadn’t really said anything to me in more than a week and his sudden grilling, without so much as a polite greeting, grated on my nerves. I focused on being calm and polite.
“It was fine. Why are you sitting on the floor with an ingot in each hand?”
“My weekend was great, thank you for asking. Some of my friends got back into town and we had a good time catching up.” I wonder if that was enough of a hint for him. He was being an ass again. What kind of a person couldn’t even reciprocate a friendly greeting?
“Oh.” I could tell that he was a bit thrown off. “I’m…uhm…glad you had a nice weekend.” Wow, he wasn’t a complete social misfit. Let’s see what he would follow it up with. “I was just wondering if you were ok. I’ve never seen you sitting on the floor holding metals.” Hmmm, not too bad. He phrased his question in a way that suggested that he was worried about me. Time to let him off the hook.
“I’m ok, thank you. I was just experimenting. As you know, I can usually tell if an ingot has impurities in it. I’ve never really thought about how I know it. I’m trying to see if I’m unconsciously feeling a difference in weight between two ingots or if there’s something else to it.”
“That’s smart. You can’t get better at something if you don’t know how you do it in the first place.” Damn, he sounds like me! “Did you discover anything yet?”
“Not really. The weight feels about the same to me.” I was lying like a cheap rug. Using the field, I could easily tell the difference in weight between the two ingots and I could feel which ingot had too many impurities in it.
“Maybe those two ingots are both good or both bad.”
“Nope, this one”, I extended my right arm out a bit, “has too many impurities in it. It’s one of the ones that I took out a few weeks ago. We don’t get too many of them and we only return any every few months.”
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“Can I try?”
“Sure.” I handed him the ingots and he weighed them carefully in each hand.
“I can’t tell any difference. The seem exactly the same to me. Are you sure one is bad?”
“Well, if you’d like to bet on it, again, I’m sure that I can talk Professor Smith into giving you double or nothing odds on the last bet you made.”
He handed me back the ingots quickly and said, “I don’t think so. I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll happily take your word on it. I’m sorry that I ever doubted you in the first place.” I laughed.
With a contrite look on his face he continued, “I’m also sorry about how I treated you before. I made assumptions about you that I shouldn’t have. I hope that you can forgive me.” Well. That was unexpected and sincere. How could I say no?
“Ok. You’re forgiven.” I held out my hand and we shook on it.
“That’s it?”
“Yup.” I put the ingots away and walked to his forge with him and we talked about his final project for the semester. The course would end in a week and every student had to hand in two project pieces. One piece was based on specific guidelines set by dad and would be used in the new university gates project and the other piece was up to each student. As long as the students showed understanding and mastery of basic blacksmithing skills, they would do well. The better the piece, the better the grade. Some students were making crude household items, such as coasters or bottle-openers, but Tyler was an over-achiever and was trying to make a knife. I thought that it was too ambitions for a beginner course, and I told him so. It required a finesse that he just didn’t have, yet. I suggested that he try making a hammer and I walked him through the required steps.
After class, I hung around and helped a few students clean up their work areas, getting the spaces ready for the advanced class later on. With that done, I walked to the inventory room and started handling different metals. The field could tell the difference between each of the metals. That was how I knew about the impurities. Now I just needed to interpret what the field was already telling me. Simply knowing that something ‘felt different’ wasn’t enough. As I held each one, I focused on the information that I was getting about it from the field. Each metal was different and had its own feel to it.
It took a bit of time but I was soon able to tell the difference between them with my eyes closed and I was able to identify which one was which. I had no idea how this could ever be very useful to me but getting used to processing information from the field couldn’t hurt. As the old saying goes, “The more you know, the more you know”. Well, maybe that wasn’t an old saying. I’ve been binge watching ‘The Office’ too much.
I continued until I could distinguish and identify each metal in inventory without even looking at it and then I had to run off to the university fitness center or I’d be late for Hot Yoga.