Listen to thisMark Krueger: Earlier Quinn Wilder shared examples of how rhythm played a key role in his practice. This time he shows us how humor and the unexpected, or a slight change of rhythm can often advance a story. In this column we present stories from youth workers who are participating in a study of youth work practice, titled Moments With Youth. In our study we interpret the stories and look for themes that inform our practice. But here we simply present the stories with the hope that the story will ring true with and shed new light on the your practice, leaving the interpretation up to you.
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Quinn Wilder
Its late fall or early winter, and we park the car in the road a few blocks from the museum. We've been mentoring together now for about two months, 15 hours per week. I feel like we’re hitting a groove. I’ve got him willing to go to the museum, since we've exhausted all the other possibilities we can think of and agree upon. Or, maybe its that our relationship has developed to the point where what we do together matters less than just being together doing something, anything.
The air coming off the lake is really cold and we hesitate before getting out of the car. He’s telling me about the things his parents do that bug him.
I say something to him about how he should try to listen to his parents more.
He stops me in my lecture with “You know, you’re just like my parents. You’re not funny – you’re not like my friends. I don’t know why I’m even here with you. This is stupid."
He slams the door and stands in the street as he says this, looking down at the ground. I stop feeding the parking meter and look at him.
I say something like “Well, you’re right, I’m not like your friends, I’m older, for one thing. But we can still have fun ..."
"No, we don't, this is stupid, I don’t know if I’m gonna do this mentoring thing anymore."
We start walking towards the museum. In front of the museum, there’s a water fountain with a statue of an unclothed boy, eternally peeing into the pool below. I know that Dylan is planning on pointing it out when we get there, probably thinking that I will be embarrassed by it or at least that I will frown upon his pointing it out.
I am thinking about his comments. “Not funny?” I’m funny, at least I can be, and I can be fun to be with. But I have been harping on him a lot, lecturing him. That’s because a couple weeks ago the social worker and the parents asked me to more strictly enforce some behavioral goals with him and to make our activities together more structured and purposeful. And I have been. But its obviously just more of the same for him, and I think as a mentor I should be taking a different approach than the other adults in his life are taking with him. He’s right: I haven’t been any fun.
"Look, Dylan, I don’t want to be that way all the time. We should have fun together, right? From now on, we’re just having fun, OK?"
"Yeah, whatever," he says, not convinced.
I feel the need to do something goofy to re-set the tone, and so I can start really having fun. It occurs to me what to do. We’re still a block away from that statue at the front of the museum.
"Race you to the penis," I say, and I take off running, leaving Dylan temporarily stunned, laughing too hard to really run. He’s howling as he catches up to me at the base of the statue, repeating, “I can’t believe you said that!"
We walk into the museum together.
