Does a bear shit in the woods?

(Asked in the same sense that if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does the tree make a sound?)

If a bear shits in the woods, does it recognize bullshit when he encounters it??

I am not one to pat myself on the back which according to one senior-level mechanical engineer (a GS-830-12) such is necessary if you want to move up in the chain-of-command (as stated to me back when I was a mere GS-850-11 just coming off the Navy’s professional internship for those recently graduating with a degree in engineering).  I am not actually a bad ass (I fractured my tail bone and have a slight rotation at the base of my spine after trying to pole vault the wall in my backyard after watching the Summer Olympics in the early 1970s). And to add folly to folly, I went out and did some bouldering (climbing over boulders) in the 1980s and ended up with a crushed-by-a-boulder) foot. Yeah, not quite a bad ass but I am a bear. But I am not the dancing bear one sees in Gavin Newsom as he prances about in strained efforts attempting to rebuke President Trump. Coupled with the disadvantage of being an entirely reasonable man, fair minded and slow to anger, others let their ego get the better of them by assuming things when they uttered half thoughts my way.

After a few muggings in my early years (not the 1950s street fights seen in the movies but actual muggings) I earned the nickname “street fighter” the totally opposite of what the nickname might suggest. But one time, in one of the muggings I was actually punched in the face. I went down, and while laying in the parking lot I though, “that didn’t hurt, why did I go down?” So I got up, lured the puncher close to a phone booth (yeah way back in the old days) by taking a couple more punches and drove into him, spinning him, and slamming him into the phone booth. I really must emphasize so that you understanding that this was not the same things as you see these days in which people beat other people to near death but instead when reflecting back on that incident they were just neighborhood kids checking out these people (me and that other guy) stopping in the neighborhood at night. The only worthwhile reason for ever bringing this up is that the incident left me with a sense of self-assurance. I think this self-assurance was lacking in many people I encountered who uttered half thought; I can’t help but think their lack of self-assurance causes them to utter half thoughts or to respond to other’s half-ass utterance out of fer they might be perceived as weak or a coward. I grew up in a time and place where physical fights were frowned upon and could lead to being kicked out of school, kicked out of the university, or fired from a job.  That self-assurance may have helped prevent me from acting out of weakness and thus foiling my objectives of earning my degree and staying employed. When I reflect back via my memoirs, I realize, however, that I might have done some people some good by giving my two cents – I mean besides instances when I replied ‘babies come from storks,” or “go have a bake sale!”

There were several senior engineers doing construction contract management back when I was in the Navy’s college engineering student employment program and working on my Bachelor of Science degree.  Because the naval officer running the office decided to bypass my first-level supervisor and assign to me four construction contracts to manage it became incumbent upon me to observe how the senior-level working engineers (non-management) carried out their job duties, as advised by that naval officer. It is debatable of whether my first-level supervisor was totally bypassed with regard to those assignments because both my first-level supervisor and that naval officer (my second-level supervisor and in case it is not clear my second-level supervisor was the manager or supervisor of my first-level supervisor).

As I assessed what one might call the carrying out of their duties of my superiors, I drew from many if not all of them their various strengths. (Note, superior in the sense that they were senior engineers while I was still merely a college student, but not superior in the sense that they had no command authority. Still, even though they were not in my direct chain-of-command, it would have made no sense to ignore their wisdom and experience). My acceptance and incorporation of positive characteristics was not, “Oh cool, he yells loud so that is a good trait to adopt,” nor “ooh, he imposed hard-nosed constraints on the contractor, that is what I should do.” What I did adopt is things reflecting reasonable thought and adherence to what the Navy contracted for as indicated in the contract plans (drawings) and specifications.  Yeah, there were some learning issues. I feel like I was played by the inspectors and when out in the field I tried to make one of the contractor’s people put on his hard hat. I also got a little would up over some contract issues. The best I can say is I learned from all of that (probably by self-assessment of such things which were along the lines of, “was that really necessary for me to that,” “was that the right approach to take,” and, “did I let myself get fooled by what others said, perhaps buying into bluster without really thinking through what was aid.”  It was a stressful job in part due to the workload my four projects imposed and the student program limiting me (by naval or federal regulations) to working just twenty hours a week. A lot of stress and a lot of lessons learned but I think my biggest regret was not doing more to help one of the contractor’s personnel by getting security to drive him out to a work location so he could retrieve his tools (I vaguely remember the request and the request not entirely registering with me, such was the stress of that job).

So sorry Gavin, but I am the bear rambling through the forest and as such, since a bear shits in the woods, this bear recognizes bullshit when he encounters it (with no implication towards Governor Newsom in anyway regarding bullshit – I haven’t lived in California for what must be nearly three decades and so I don’t bother myself to dig into what goes in my once beloved state of residence. But hey, if you dance like a bear while being a public figure, then as the saying goes, you subject yourself to ridicule! 

For other parallels to be a bear rambling through the forest of work and life, well, you will just have to read my memoirs and scour over this website.