I have witnessed the joy of learning many times. Sam learning to walk. Sara learning another language. It all seemed kind of sweet and amusing. Today I was a part of “Sara learning to drive”. I am not here to give her a hard time. In fact she did a pretty good job. She made it to Taco Tuesday and around the neighborhood with only a couple of “moments". The curious part of this adventure was watching someone learn something in a totally new way. Example. It’s amusing and entertaining to watch a baby try to figure out what foot to put forward and then plop down on its butt. Everyone points and laughs, the baby giggles and flops around to try again. It is not amusing OR entertaining when the 16 year old can’t figure out what pedal to push, how hard and how close one might be to crashing thousands of dollars of metal and glass into one another. All of my previous teaching moments have only placed the learning person in peril. This was a whole new ball game. You take for granted that a 16 year old can determine when to turn the wheel to get the car from A to B. You can’t. The one I can’t figure out is how long or how the message gets lost from ear to foot. STOP!!! – It actually doesn’t work. You can say or yell stop 3-4-5 times and not get the desired result. I’m also still in awe of the human brain and how a person can think it might be ok to simply drive across a lane of traffic without even bothering to glance either way. Are all kids like this, or does my kid have no sense of self preservation? I guess we’ll find out. Stay tuned.
