New Tricks

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

The term is used to describe old people as often as it is used to describe dogs. Conventional wisdom tends to think that learning curves diminish with age.

They might be right.

But my elder dog, Riley, is proving that something else is true, too. An old dog can re-visit old habits.

And I don’t mean sitting on command, here. I’ve witnessed a profound change in old Riley since we brought our new puppy home. She’s less aggressive with other dogs and people than she usually is, for one thing. We were worried she would relapse into aggressive behavior. But the opposite has been true.

And what’s more, I witnessed something recently I thought I’d never see again: Riley, despite all her arthritic joints and chronic sprains, gets in puppy pose with her tail wagging. It looks like what I must look like playing pickup basketball: an old body ignoring pain for the fun of it.

And I think I’d rather (as I grow old) be able to revisit old habits than go make a bunch of new ones. You can keep your new tricks to yourself.

Everything I enjoy teaches me this.

Stepwork: I didn’t think there would be anything as spiritually moving as clearing away the wreckage of my past to live freely in the present; then I went and led someone else through the process.

Teaching: I never imagined a more profound literary experience than reading The American Scholar while trekking across the country solo; then I taught the book in class.

Marriage: Never have I loved a woman more than when I professed my lifelong commitment to my wife; until it’s 13 years later and we have the house to ourselves for the first time all year.

I think that humans are faced with the opportunity to relish a re-visit every day on this earth.

We will revisit a numbing flurry of monotonous tasks each day. Normalcy can feel like a cudgel to the soul sometimes. I think this is why so much of our modern hero’s journey (think every Marvel story ever told) contains an element of opposition to what is bland and normal.

You don’t see television shows about people watching television shows. We want to watch stories of people doing more interesting things than we do in our own lives. Characters in popular shows have wild drives and ambitions. Whereas my main ambition in a given day is to get through it so that my wife and I can sit on the couch and watch other fictitious people lead lives of intrigue.

What I’d like to stress in this post is that each day holds so much more if we pay attention.

After years of coming off the ski slope with a sore back and weak knees, I am finally skiing with my two older kids. I’m their dad on the slope now, not their ski instructor. Those long days on the mountain seem like a blur to me now that we three can ride on a lift together and map out the day.

They always want to stay until last chair—something I used to always want to do, too. And I promise them with each trip that I will not be the one to say it’s time to go home. And they can tell me they want to go home whenever they’re ready.

When we ski that last run, inevitably under stationary chairs, we hoot and holler and show off the best turns we can make. And then, when our ski boots pop out of our bindings, we each perform an awkward ski-boot dance, kind of like tap dancing with club feet. “We did it. We did it.” It is at this point that my son uses his ski pole to challenge me to a fencing match. “On guard!”

I guess you can say that parenthood, when done right, is just a revisiting of childhood.

But I resist this notion often. There is something in me that wants to cut off my childhood experiences. I’m a grown man, for God’s sake. What businesses have I to hoot and holler?

It’s when I’m spiritually fit enough that I can let my guard down and act like a goofy kid that I feel the happiest.

I like to think that when I’m much older and grayer, I won’t need to go sky diving to feel alive—I’ll just need to dance down the street—or play tag with some kid at the park.

Re-visitations have been on my mind lately because I am, for the first time, teaching the same class twice in one year.

Normally, after teaching Mary Shelley and William Shakespeare to packs of grown and immature young men, I have a full summer to regroup. And I need it. It’s not a break; it’s a ceasefire. I lick my wounds and rest my nerves.

This year is different. I just began British Literature for a second time this school year. One pack out; the next one in. And over Christmas Break, before I resumed the journey, the thought of boarding on a ship and heading to the North Pole of Frankenstein all over again felt like a Sisyphean task. Reading a Romantic feminist novel to uninterested youth. How could I possibly do that again—and now!?

But then the students started filing in. I knew some already. Others were foreign souls. Then I start to read their writing and hear what they expect Frankenstein to be about. I am charmed once again: not by the book, but by the students I get to teach.

While my interest in the book will never wane (if for no other reason than it is my job to convey interest in literature) it is not the book that keeps me coming back to the classroom. It is the students. It is the art of reaching them. It is the humanity in the connection and the creativity in the instruction. I’ve never been more certain in my life that education has next to nothing to do with curriculum.

Teaching is happens between a teacher and his students.

This applies to everyday life, I’m convinced.

It’s not about cooking eggs in the morning and taking my kids to school. It’s about revisiting the breakfast table and the car ride conversation with a sense of awe in how my children will express themselves today. If I’m paying attention well enough, I will notice that nothing will ever be the same. We are evolving continually. I don’t mean the human species, here. I mean you and me. Eggs and carpools are the touchstones a wild and unpredictable journey.

When I don’t notice this, the fault is mine—not the skillet or the traffic.

The powerful play will continue without us. We might as well contribute a verse.