Listen to thisI am learning a new behaviour. Well, not “new in the world” – just new to me. Probably quite familiar and common to some of you. But new to me. I call it “spotting poison ivy”.
Sylviane and I moved into a new home in the fall, and as the spring has come to bloom we have discovered that this neighbourhood is resplendent with poison ivy. Now for those of you who might not know, poison ivy is a pretty green plant (sometimes a ground cover and sometimes a vine) which, should you be so unfortunate as to come into contact with it, will make your life miserable for at least a few weeks, if not months: intensive itching, blistering of the skin, rash, pain. Anyway, I am sure that is enough to give you the picture and if not, just google it.
So, the thing about poison ivy is that it seems to be indiscriminate – it will affect man, woman, child, and dog – I don’t know about the rest of the animal kingdom. And all it takes is a touch, a gentle caress, a momentary contact. So, as I walk through the woods, or along the side of the road, I have to be ever observant for the ivy. The end result is that I spend more time “looking down” than is normal for me. Normally as I walk along I look up, out, left, right, along, all those things, but not “down” very much (which, by the way, probably explains why I have stepped on so many nails in my life). Now as I walk, I have to keep remembering to look down, look around down there. And then, although I might have enjoyed the “looking down” if it was to observe nature, I have to look down with a discriminating eye, trying to detect the difference between harmless and harmful ground covers. And of course, learning to detect a new plant, which is similar in so many ways to other plants, requires concentration. Is that it? Is that? Is this one harmful? Or benign? Paranoid walking, I call it.
Like the learning of new behaviours this one is, for me, difficult. It requires un-doing another behaviour. And every day I catch myself reverting to the old behaviour of, let’s just call it “looking around”. There I am walking the dog along the trail and suddenly I panic: I have been looking around. I haven’t been “looking down” to make sure the dog (Gypsie is her name) is not wandering off to pee in a patch of poison ivy – really, she did it once and I wouldn't, well, “wish it on a dog”, to tell the truth. Kept us all up all night. Sylviane, Gypsie and me.
So, I snap out of my wandering reverie and look down, scanning the few feet in front of both of us to make sure we are safe, not about to run into dangerous terrain from which we both will have difficulty recovering. Looking after self, and looking after other – even if other is “only a dog”. Hey, you care about who and what you care about!
You would think it would be easy for me to learn a new behaviour after all these years ("More behind than to come”, as my friend Ernie would surely say). By now, I should be experienced in learning new things – or, on the other hand, they also say that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks (which I disagree with, by the way, because my old dog is still learning new things). Anyway, I digress.
This learning of a new behaviour is still difficult, even after all these years of practice. I can’t remember what it was like when I was learning something new at the age of 14, or 12, or even later but I have this lingering memory that it has always been the same – commit to something new and find yourself reverting to the previous way.
No wonder it is so hard for kids – they don’t even have the practice we do. And as we walk with them through the potentially dangerous territory of new terrain, perhaps it is our job to help them out by reminding them to practise this new behaviour. I know I sure wish I had someone walking along beside me reminding me – and so does Gypsie, I bet.
Thom
