What are you teaching?

     I have said here before that the very best way to learn is to teach.  Once again I have been entrusted with a young person fresh out of the academy to teach, mentor and show him the ropes, as it were on the street.
     The street, you see, has absolutely nothing to do with what he learned in the academy.  The streets and alleyways are where one learns the truly important stuff.
     He is all of 29 years old, a bit frightening when I think that my career started before he was born!
     And so, as my days in the saddle are now clearly numbered, I get to pass along what I have learned to him.  And what I have learned was mostly through mistakes.  Yvonne Chouinard said that good judgement is the result of experiences.  And most telling experiences are the result of bad judgement.  How true.
     Teaching in the negative is rarely productive; don't do this, don't do that, never say this and so on.  So, it gets interesting to see him really screw up on something and then resist the temptation to tell him about all the things he did wrong.  A great teacher once approached me telling me that what I had done was "just one way of doing things", the wrong way, but  he didn't say so.  Instead, he told me that we were going to do this task again, but this time to try this technique or approach and see how that goes.  In gentle terms and ways, he guided me to the right path.
     And so, now it's my turn to teach, mostly by example.  I have to be on my best behavior, my best attitude and my best at remembering all the funny little things that have accumulated over the years that I tend to take for granted as they are now automatic.
     This, in turn teaches me to be a better person, a better observer and a better relater to the public as we both go about not only our jobs, but our mutual learning experience.
     Right now after just 2 weeks together, I sense that he is deeply concerned about his reaction to his first traumatic scene what ever it might be.  While I tell him that he will do fine, he won't know this in his heart until the event is over and he can breathe a sigh of relief.  All I can tell him is that he won't realize it until it is over, but that wreck, that drowning or any other horrible scene viewed in static, is now so quickly over and that he did everything right.  Then, and only then can we talk about it, share what was going on and what went right, what could have gone better.  Only then.
     So, if you see me and my unruly hair seems to be almost under control, pants pressed a bit crisper and leather polished a bit brighter, that is just me, learning from my rookie.