I'm starting to see the wisdom in teaching less and trying to keep things informal most of the time. And even that photo of that little girl with her air rifle resting on some pillows answered a question that was nagging at me in my head, "Do I really need to teach him the four basic military firing positions: standing, kneeling, sitting and prone, when I rarely even use them myself?"
Yeah. I'm a little touched in some ways.
But it also reminded me, for instance, of a time when I was a boy. I didn't really have a father around; but we had a real nice undersheriff -- God bless him! -- and he took me and a couple of my friends to the junk yard in his patrol car one afternoon to go shooting before they'd built a shooting range in our area. He had a sawed off shotgun in his car, and he let us boys loose with it. I did something really stupid and unsafe with it, and he saw it. And I saw that he saw it. But he didn't say anything, and I knew I'd screwed up. And I was like, "Be careful! Straighten up!" to myself.
Or like when I was learning to fly helicopters, when I was far along enough to be able to call my own take off and landing scenarios, we had a real calm morning one day. 1-3 mph winds at most. I had the brilliant idea of taking off with the wind, just to see what would happen. I thought it'd be ok, as still as it was. So I called in to the tower for clearance to take off that way, and of course, they gave it. It's not their job to tell a pilot how to fly. It's their job to keep aircraft from colliding with one another.
My instructor didn't say anything, and off I went. And things got a little interesting there for a bit. And after we managed to live through it and I got things settled down and in a more sane situation, he asked me, "Ok. Why did you do that?" And I told him. And he said, "You're not going to do that anymore, now, are you?" "Uh.. No."
Sometimes we learn more from our stupid mistakes than we do from textbooks and instructors... and I just realized in reading and thinking about this thread that I may be faced with a situation with this boy along the same lines as what these men faced with me. And I may need to be as good about it as they were with me, too! Ugh.
But that's ok.
It'll be good for me. Hopefully.
I know I have to be responsible about it, of course.
I never thought about that, or some of these other things you guys have brought up.
But I really appreciate them!!!
WWJ
