In which activity do you pay tribute to the one who taught you how?
My friend informs me that the most obnoxious phrase in my lexicon is “Let me tell/show you how the big boys do it.”
There are acts we perform we cannot unattach from the memory of the man who taught us it and a certainty that we know how to do it
correctly.
Hitting a golf ball, digging a hole, parking a car, loading a gun, planing a board and casting a lure are all activities that have me
channelling a mentor.
What do you do that is forever a tribute to a teacher?
Read more Advice & Confessions.
A young father teaches his young son to play guitar image courtesy of Shutterstock
I saw a man today who I met 50 years ago. He was the older brother of a classmate and I was terrified of him. Today he is a tiny Buddhist, who led chants, at his Father’s wake.
I had reason to think of him last month when I had use for an axe on a stump; Mark taught me and Paul to sharpen a Boy Scout hatchet which he probably threw at us like Ed Ames…..
He showed us the file & whet stone method, I used an angle grinder and a belt sander– but I still honored him…
That’s good, how you found a way to get around your basic philosophical differences.
Yeah getting whipped on by a Karate fiend in the late 60’s was against my principles- other than Odd Job who the F knew martial arts? Oh right Kato, too. He was like James Bond in a dune buggy.
Here in the path of Sandy & last night’s no name Nor’Easter it is handy as hell to be able to fix stuff this week….
I’m working a major disaster recovery site in lower Manhattan, I’ve been getting paid for 40 years to make and fix stuff: but there is a competency amongst the men and women on this site that simply elates me.
Some words to cheer you from Camus’ The Plague
“We learn in times of pestilence … there are more things to admire in men than to despise.”
In the course of my day I had the opportunity to discuss my concept of the “stick gene” which moved me a long way towards my belief that there is a very real difference between men and women and it is nature not nurture. The “stick gene” observation is based upon my Irish Twins. My daughter first emerged to walk the yard and picked up a few sticks and carried them or but them down with indifference, my son picked up a stick and wailed hell out of a bush the first chance he got, he jabbed the stick into… Read more »
The guy who taught me to drive just told me to drive one afternoon as he was tired. So I drove a standard tranny F350 with a trailer uphill, maybe 15 miles to the yard. He figured I could do it because I watched what he did & didn’t really care that I was a year away from being eligible for a learners permit. My children F around with their phones while I drive and can’t drive a stick.
My mother taught me to drive. I don’t know how we managed. My father was away at a training for weeks, and I had made a snap decision to stay in town for college, requiring that I hurry up and learn to drive myself to school. I learned on a standard. I still prefer to own a standard transmission. I’ve learned to play the organ from my grandfather, so whenever I look at sheet music, I hear his voice saying, “Every Good Boy Does Fine.” I remembered from his lessons that where you start out on the keyboard is important,… Read more »
Driving. If my dad were a superhero we wouldn’t need a DMV. I admire this about him, but I also know that, while it’s bad to drive aggressively, driving defensively makes you angry/aggressive at the offensive drivers. It wasn’t until I rear-ended someone, and saw him sincerely more happy that I was ok than disappointed, that I understood it really was about getting there intact rather than on time and in line.
@Rannoch- Oho… I was thinking small and here you go with a whole life…
Overachieving commenters 🙂
In the space of a couple of years I lost one hero and found to people who shaped my formative years. My father died not long before my 10th birthday. He was one of the first people to recieve a heart valve in the UK. An operation that left him on various medications and vulnerable to infection. In truth, I don;t know much about it all. One day he was here, the next he was gone. Shortly after his death I found Bruce Lee. It was bittersweet. Here was an invincible man, unlike anyone I had ever seen before. Only… Read more »