The Knife That's Always Sharp

Hefting the small box in my hand, I remarked to the young computer salesman that it was heavier than I had expected. Blinking wisely, he conveyed a mild rebuke of my apparent ignorance in matters technical. "Well, it does a lot of complex data transformations you'd have to be an engineer to understand." Then he confided than an engineering degree would be the pot of gold at the end of his career's rainbow.

I regained some ground with a casual reference to having earned my first engineering degree almost 35 years ago--and then mentioned a former employer. That prestigious company's name brought him fully under my spell. "Wow! You worked there? Their calculators are tops!"

"But that was in the days before calculators, and engineers used slide rules." His dreamy look deepened as he envisioned me somewhere in antiquity, probably between Moses and Robin Hood." Historical significance thus secured, I paid for my box, leaving him wondering how an ancient mystic had wandered into his store.

This was not my first time to play the slide rule as a trump card to win an advantage. One notable opportunity fell from the sky several years ago when I regretfully informed a desperate caller that she had the wrong number.

"But who are you, and what do you do?" she implored. "And do you make speeches? I must find a speaker for our student librarians convention." I'm still not sure why I agreed to such an outlandish proposal.

The appointed day arrived, and I stepped to the platform with a box of relics which had been formative in my career. Like rabbits from hat, I plucked them out one by one with a magician's flourish, calling for a show of hands when there was any degree of recognition.

The first, a vacuum tube, drew only stares. Vacuum tubes, after making radio and television household realities, gradually faded into virtual obscurity. And like it or not, engineers had to adapt to changing tools if innovation and careers were to be perpetuated. Student librarians would face the same challenge.

When I finally brandished the slide rule, a few hands quivered. But incredulity swept over them upon hearing that slide rules helped put men on the moon in the days when brazen engineers wore them from their belts like swords. The advent of the electronic calculator, however, banished slide rules to dark closets and curiosity shops.

How many student librarians wanted to be successful? All hands shot skyward. New gadgets and new ways demand continual adaptation, and success partially depends on a person's willingness to adjust.

But when careers are concluded, probably somewhere between Moses and Robin Hood, what will be the verdict? Changing tools and methods are significant variables in the equation of success, but there is one constant that's independent of profession: personal integrity. And unlike the slide rule, integrity should never be banished to dusty closets or curiosity shops. It's the knife that's always sharp--and never out of style.

Copyright 2002 James McAlister

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