Learning Curve

 I am currently sixty years old. 

I don't have a father. 

I don't have a mother. 

I have a lot of teachers around me most every day, but they are busy with the education of children much younger than me. 

How am I going to learn now? 

The good news is this: I have a pretty solid base upon which to work. I've been paying attention, especially over the past thirty years. Becoming an adult with all its attendant responsibilities and vagaries hasn't been the awful chore that I had anticipated back in my twenties. As it turns out, many of those peculiar habits I had like setting out my clothes for the next day when I was in grade school made the jump with me to adulthood and have set me on a path that finds me showing up for work early rather than late. Most every day. And all of that reading I did? Turns out that knowing things is useful, even if it's only so that you can make innocuous conversation while you're waiting for the meeting to begin. 

Part of me would like to head on down to the ASPCA and find a mature dog, maybe eleven or twelve years old, and bring them home with the expressed mission of teaching him or her to do new tricks. Because that's what I feel like the last three decades have been for me. Getting over my paranoid fear of calling strangers on the telephone, for example. Not in a telemarketing sort of way, but in that reaching out to customer service folks whom I continue assume will only laugh at my ridiculous requests for help. I should know better, shouldn't I? Doesn't everyone know that replacing a compressor on a refrigerator is an extremely complex and expensive operation and should not be attempted by anyone without advanced certification?  I wouldn't know unless I asked. That little snap of shame turns out to be totally worth it, and I have discovered that giving others a chance to unleash their expertise is a great way to make them feel good about themselves. 

And along the way, I get to learn more about refrigerators. And exhaust systems. And most anything else in the world that still evades me. Show up on time, ready to learn. 

I guess I didn't need to worry about it after all.