POCKETS ARE IMPORTANT

For electrician's apprentices anyway, and for me specifically. As an apprentice, you spend an inordinate amout of time handing your tools to your journeyman for a variety of marking,measuring,cutting,screwdriving, etc.
I guess the logic in this is that by the apprentice being able to provide the journeyman with the tool he needs, the apprentice learns. OK...I know that a pencil is important, but if I don't have a pocket to put it in, I'm fucked. Today, I had a shirt with 2 pockets, and don't you know I was johnny on the fucking spot...pencil,sharpie marker, voltage tester...I had it all.
When the journeyman says "you got a pencil"? if I am without shirt pocket I have to go rummage through my toolbag and get that "journeyman look". It is designed to be humiliating. If you follow the chain of apprenticeship back to the first journeyman/apprentice, you will find a trade brimming with people who have been abused, humiliated and fucked with and a ingrained belief that they are obligated to pass on the pain.
I am lucky in this respect...I am older than my journeyman, and he rarely fucks with me. When he does, it's mostly good natured ribbing and it happens more when we are working with other crews. The younger apprentices endure much harsher "humor" than I do...for example, nobody has ever covered my tool bag with duct tape and hung it from the ceiling, or screwed it to the floor with an easy anchor. And I've noticed the younger the apprentice, the more they get fucked with.
It's clear to me that there is a motivating factor at play here...the faster I get smarter, the less they will torment me, and I will become a competent electrician. But since I already know the game (albiet from another trade entirely) I have been spared the ritual abuse...or, they fear that I will kick their ass. Either way I'm cool with it.
But I still try to make sure I have pockets...and I have to admit, a tool bag dangling from the ceiling covered in duct tape is funny, as long as it's not mine...well even if it is...it's funny.
Until you get cracked upside the head with a pair of pliers that is.
Awww...the fraternity of it all.