Mentor Me

When I moved into the house I'm currently in the neighbor kid was like 8 or 9 years old. Now he is 15. We've goofed off a lot together over the years. Fireworks, stilts, bicycles and so on.

Well last week he was hanging out with me in my garage and asked me if I would take him surfing as he'd never been and it was one of his things to do this summer. After I reassured his mom he wouldn't drown we made a time to get together.

Now, I'm not a capital S surfer. I just goof off at it for fun 'cause I live in San Diego and I can. But I know the basics well enough to get most people started. (or break their teeth out!) So it was kinda cool to help someone learn a new thing, especially as he was sooo enthusiastic about it and once to go once a week till school starts.



That's the kiddo above there in the photo. Next time if it looks like he is starting to stand up I'll let him use my GoPro and get some pictures of him actually surfing. He'll like that!

Now this isn't exactly new to me. Back when I was living in Oregon and going to college I was big into rock climbing. Heck, I was the president of the Southern Oregon Rock Climbing Club based outta nearby Ashland Oregon at the university. I taught people new to the club how to climb. I met highschool kids at my job who needed to do a senior project to graduate and every year I would be helping one complete this project, learning to rock climb, so they could graduate.

In my own college I wrote a rock climbing guide to a local area for a technical writing class. So yeah, at one time I knew my stuff. And if you have a good student, even though I'm not a very good surfer, it is still a good feeling to help someone learn.