ah ha!

02/23/2011

Everyone has these "ah ha" moments.
Maybe you discovered how to solve a math problem. Maybe you figured out how they put just the right amount of cheese in a baby ravioli to make it yummy. maybe it was something much more complex or... maybe you had an "ah ha" moment like I did yesterday. One that is common scense but you never thought of or you never observed for yourself.

So this particular training, I had tought for the first time back in November and some of the instructors I worked with then, I am working with now. However, we are given this manual that I believe is 78 pages. It tells you what to say word for word including examples. (plus I had taken this training 3 or 4 times myself) so Jonathan being Jonathan, everything has to be right on the line. Every t has to be crossed perfectly and every i had to be dotted perfectly because that is how it suppose to be done and this is our script in a play and we have to follow it word for word.

(as my favorite children's book as an adult pops in my head as I am writing this...)
"Except when you don’t.
Because, sometimes, you won’t." dr seus, the places you'll go.

sometimes you wont cross your T's. Sometimes you may forget to dot your I's. Maybe it wont matter to you if you write on the line perfectly or maybe someone or something wont let you.

To refresh your memory, or if you didnt read the last entry, my coworkers can read from the manual or they have these blank charts which they have to fill in, but if they forget something, they can either look at the manual or look at the board and even though the board is blank, looking at it may jog their memory of what to write or say next and I dont have either of these luxuries.

I have to memorize my parts word for word. I think it's 8 pages of words my parts are in total.

So here we go with the ah ha moment.

I am sitting there listening to my coworkers and they are doing their parts. I am putting in my 2 or 3 cents where I can. I can so tell when someone is reading from the script or when they are doing it from memory.

Especially when someone screws up.

I wait and wait to see if my coworkers say anything but they dont.
I wait and wait to see if the person corrects themself but they dont.
I wait for a student, who never took this class, to scream out "you messed up" but no one says anything.
I want to say something. I want to correct them but something .... from somewhere tells me not to say anything. That it is ok. that....

no one noticed or if they did, they didnt care.

and life goes on.

This may seem simple and you knew this but for me, I wanted to correct the person. I wanted to point out their mistake. but... it's ok.

And as I sat there, I thought back to Disney on ice. We had got there about 20 minutes late. We had told the girls that we only missed the first couple of minutes. you know what? no one cared. no one noticed. (except for me.) the girls had a great time. I had a great time. Jeff had a great time.
Life goes on. and ... it was ok.

I mean, wow, so I can screw up in life and no one will notice or care.
life will go on.
the sun will still rise.
people will still be born and people will still die.
We will still have taxes and Elvis will live on forever in los vagus.

and... it is ok.