Tools
I feel like Daniel-son. The past few days, I have been having my moments with my Mr Miyagi, aka Martinez, who has been suddenly and silently appearing at my side, omnipresent and omniportent, and guiding me to the most elementary of tasks with his halting English. Mostly he gestures to me. Without my realization, he sees me struggling with something and shows up to give me the proper tools to do the job. Today he surprised me with a crescent wrench of my very own. Yesterday it was my own cart, to making the task of sanitizing the monkey toys easier. He gives me the tools to conquer boredom, as Mr Miyagi gave Daniel the tools to conquer evil. It makes me think about, among other things, the tools, both physical and mental, that we bring to the table to complete our missions in this world. Without the right tools, we cannot do what is asked of us.

I thought about this the other day, before the gift of the crescent wrench, when I was trying to unscrew hanging toys from the monkey cages with a huge old cresent wrench that kept slipping. For some reason, it reminded me of an incident when I was just learning how to do jugular sticks on dogs. The girl who was training me, Kelly, had shown me how to find the jugular by sight. I had gotten pretty good at eyeing it, and so she was having me stick everything. We came to a white Standard Poodle. This should have been an easy stick. Standard Poodles have great big veins that pop up easily, and the white fur should have made it even easier. I tried and tried, but could not get a feel on the vein. Kelly kept pushing me to keep trying and not to give up, and I was failing miserably, when the doctor got frustrated and cut into the action. I think he was mad at Kelly for pushing the issue, and when he went to make the stick, he said "Well, no wonder. This dog does not have a palpable vein." He was saying it loudly to make me feel better, and to make Kelly feel bad for forcing failure on me by offering me a challenge I was not up to. However, really what I took away from that, in retrospect, is that she was expecting me to do a job with the wrong tools. She had only given me one tool to try on all cases, when really, when it comes to drawing blood (at least on animals), there are three: sight, feel, and anatomical guess. She had failed to give me all three tools before asking me to be able to complete the more challenging cases. Instead of giving me a lesson in failed perserverance, she could have used it as a learning opportunity, a time to introduce the next tool. I thought about that a lot when working at the Animal EC, on the occasions I drew blood on an animal with veins that I could not see, I could not feel, and I had to use the last tool and "go blind", knowing that it had to be in that area somewhere, and if I used my landmarks correctly, I could find it.

What are the tools of your trade? How did you acquire them?