Date:
Wed, 06 Jun 2001 16:02:19 -0000
From:
"John Wiseman" <jwiseman@ati.com>
Subject:
school presentation (long)
Thought
some folks might like to hear about a hang gliding talk I
gave
recently at my son's elementary school.
Got a
note home from the office begging for more parents to
participate
in Career/Hobby day, stating that they were a few
presenters
short of a full day. I had done a talk
there a few years
ago on
electrical engineering, with a microphone and an oscilloscope,
with
tuning forks and noise makers, blah, blah, and I guess they
remembered
that. I responded by saying that even I
was bored with
that,
but the 'Hobby' thing interested me.
What do you say I bring a
HANG
GLIDER, set it up in the gym, and I talk about that? After some
negotiations
(I got a call from the principal's secretary making sure
that I
was not going to land in the soccer fields or take off from
the
gymnasium roof - True. I kid you not...) I agreed to sit there
all day
and have 7 different groups of 5th and 6th graders come by
every
45 minutes to hear my narrative.
So what
I did was this. I set the glider up in
the gym, so there was
plenty
of space to lift it up and maneuver it around.
Each group of
about
20-25 kids came in escorted by their teacher, and I had them
sit
down around the glider, at which time I introduced myself and
what I
was going to say. After a couple of
minutes I switched on the
10-minute
introductory videotape that the USHGA puts out. After
that, I
did a walk-around of the equipment, and explained the glider,
harness,
vario, radio, parachute, etc. I then
asked for a volunteer
(in all
groups, ALL 50 hands immediately jumped up, and they didn't
even
know what I wanted them to do yet...) to help me out. This
volunteer
then got into my harness and was allowed to hang from the
glider
as I held up the keel. As I explained
the weight shift
techniques,
the volunteer would try to do what I was saying.
Needless
to say, the volunteer quickly became the envy of the class,
and I
paid them off afterwards by giving them a Zing-Wing as a
souvenir.
45
minutes went by very quickly, and after questions-and-answers,
they would
NOT LEAVE! They all wanted to touch the
glider, and most
wanted
to lift it up to see how heavy it was.
Somehow, I managed to
get
through 4 sessions in the morning, then it was lunch break in the
teacher's
lounge. I felt so privileged! Lunch in the teacher's
lounge,
that forbidden zone that as a student you always wondered
what
was going on in. But that's when I came
back down to earth, as
I had
to talk to all boring adults. The PTA
moms who had organized
the day
had us all introduce ourselves and say what we were talking
about. "Joe Blow, I am talking about the
Internet." "John Smith, I
am a
soccer coach." "Suzy
So-and-so, I collect rocks." ...
"John
Wiseman,
I fly hang gliders." Deafening
silence. Uh, oh. The
secret
was out. I could tell from the looks on
the PTA moms' faces
that
there might be some concern about impressionable children, and
what
they would be listening to. But the
introductions continued,
and of
course lunch conversation was dotted with the usual inane
questions,
such as these actual ones -
"Aren't
you afraid of dying?" Yes, but I'm
more afraid of not living.
"Your
wife allows you to do this?" She
talked me into trying it.
"What's
the closest you've come to getting killed?" Well lately, it
was
when a distracted mom on a cellphone ran a stop sign in her Ford
Expedition
and almost broadsided me.
Luckily,
lunch ended quickly.
I did 3
more sessions in the afternoon and by the end I could not
speak
anymore. I totally lost my voice, and
it took a couple of days
to
recover. I think the most interesting
thing about the day was the
contrast
in questions between the adults and the children. The kids'
questions
were highly focused and relevant, such as -
"How
do you learn to do this?"
"How
much does it cost?"
"Where
do you buy a hang glider?"
"Can
kids do this?" "Have your
kids done this?"
and the
best one of all, that no adult ever asks...
"What's
it like?"
The
next day, my family and I sat down at a table in a local
restaurant. Some lady came up to us and asked "Are
you the hang
glider
guy?" Seems that her daughter had
recognized me and pointed
me out
to her. She came over to say how much
her daughter had
enjoyed
the talk, and that it was all she could think about all night
long
when she came home from school. That
was nice. My thoughts
were
something like "well maybe someday your daughter will share the
sky
with my kids", but the reality came out merely as a "thank
you".
As
others have pointed out, you get to know your limits with the
adults
really quickly.
Geez,
what happens to folks when they grow up?
Are we just overgrown
children? From what I saw, I certainly hope so...
john