Today’s conversation went something like this…
“I can’t cox.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve never done it before.”
“So?”
“So, I’ll fail.”
“Had anyone else ever coxed before their first time here?”
“No.”
“So, why can’t you do it?”
“Because I can’t.”
“Because I can’t.”
All this while we were throwing our dock lines off and our reluctant cox took her place at the helm. She wasn’t five minutes out, using the tiller for the first time, before she asked, ever so shyly “Can I do the commands too?”
She was loud, she was sure, she made mistakes, and she recovered from them. She maneuvered the gig very well against a strong northeast wind.
The crew agreed that a fair “punishment” for “lying” to us that she was going to fail should be dipping her hand in the cold water.
Why are these kids so sure that making a mistake is the same as failing? What have we as a society taught them, and how do we un-teach it?
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