And so a child will lead them

In my haste to post the Globe story on the Big Dig this morning, I missed this tragi-comic moment:

He [safety engineer John J. Keaveney] said he really began to worry about the ceiling after a third-grade class from his hometown of Norwell came to visit the Big Dig for a tour in spring 1999. He showed the class some concrete ceiling panels and pointed to the bolts protruding from the ceiling, explaining that the panels would one day hang from those bolts.

A third-grade girl raised her hand and asked him, ``Will those things hold up the concrete?"

He started voicing concerns among his colleagues and then to managers after that. ``It was like the [third-graders] had pointed out the emperor has no clothes," he said. ``I said, `Yes, it would hold,' but then I thought about it."

Unreal.