The Oldest Guy in the Room

I was doing training for a client that I’ve had for more than 20 years.

It was a great session as we laughed a lot and had a great debate about safety.

I mentioned that I’d been checking sites for about 34 years, and looked at a real young kid sitting in the front row.

“What were you doing in 1991?” I asked.

“Wasn’t even a gleam,” he said.

“Well, construction was a lot different back then,” I said. “There are some guys in here who remember, right?”

I glanced all around the 40+ people in the room.

It kind of dawned on me.

“Who here is at least 60?” I asked.

There weren’t any hands raised.

“Come on!” I yelled. “I’m the oldest guy in the room?”

Yet, I didn’t dwell on it.

Instead, I felt it in the center of my chest.

The oldest guy in the room????

After the class was over, on the ride home, I thought back to my first day on a construction project.

I was the kid.

I spent years as the kid on the sites.

Blinked.

And now, the oldest guy in the room?

Thing is, I take my job as a veteran seriously. I often talk to the older guys in the crew who are frustrated with younger guys who “don’t know their ass from their elbow”.

“We were all there,” I mention. “Be patient.”

I wanted to tell that kid in the front row that time would fly on by, and that he should absorb as much as he could from those of us who’ve been around forever…

…but he doesn’t care about that.

He’s about forty years away from being the oldest guy in the room.

He knows it all.

At least I did at that age.

I have to teach another class tomorrow….

…I might be in the same boat again.

Gonna’ have to get used to it.