I’ve long enjoyed teaching:
It’s all about empowerment. It’s about watering the bamboo. It’s about the fishing not the fish.
At Georgetown University and Korea I taught climbing.
At REI I taught young parents how they could still backcountry camp, only now with their toddlers.
When I was a company commander, I got to play Drill Sergeant. I took a platoon of lieutenant and E-5 trainees, fired them up and set them loose in the woods of Fort Pickett, Virginia. I dove into each one of their foxholes. I questioned them. I quizzed them. I coached them.
At Fort Irwin, California — before the tent burned down — I went through 3 butcher charts. The unit was on its way to Iraq. I drew the battlefield flow, beans & bullets for the XO and First Sergeant.
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At Westpoint (USMA) I interviewed with Colonel Donelson. My daughter was 6 months old and I was 6 months into my company command. My wife and I decided that we would have stayed on for Westpoint or the Naval PostGraduate School in Monterey. Army Buddy Captain Guiseppe “Joe” DiNola (2005 BMW R1200RT, 66,000 accident-free miles) made the cut. Joe went on to Columbia University and taught sociology and psychology at the Military Academy.
I moved to Chicago and became a factory foreman. My team members came from southside Chicago, akin to Southy in Boston. I learned how to pull Material Requirements Planning (MRP) database queries. I taught my people. Thus empowered they could handle issues with production line parts-hoarders. In performance reviews, I discussed how to advance in USRobotics, or elsewhere, and plot a course for a career that might allow them to live in Sauganash instead of Cicero.
We arrived at Von’s rock & roll grocery store off of Hollywood Boulevard. I gave my 4 year-old daughter a $10 bill. We went through each aisle.
“Daddy, can I have …”
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Watching the wheels turn …
“I think I can”
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When we got through the last aisle, we got another cart. We lifted up each item and gave it the once-over.
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“Well, Daddy, we already have that box at home.”
scrotocycles.rip 