THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SPEAKING

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Logo by Stefan Strasser

Keeping Those Frogs Under the Basket

(From This Is Your Captain Speaking) 

The gaining of experience counts for little if you don’t use it.

Good judgment comes from bad experience,

and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

 The human mind is an amazing piece of equipment. In some ways, it is far more powerful than the largest, fastest computer. In other ways, it is pitifully puny.

 It has the ability to assimilate massive amounts of information and string it all together in logical fashion. Computers, of course, can store the information, but so far, they are woefully lacking in the logic department. The techies, I’m told, are working on this business of “artificial intelligence”, but they still have a ways to go. And even when they get to the point where they can build machines that actually think, I believe there will still be an element missing in the machine that is fundamental in the human. It has to do with the human spirit.

 But even so, machines do a better job of retaining information than we air-breathing mortals. Oh, we learn easily enough, or at least some of you folks do. It’s the retaining it after it’s learned that appears to be the problem.

 At the pilot training center for our glorious airline, the experience of checking out on a new airplane is often compared to trying to drink from a fire hose. New information is presented at a fast and furious pace. The reason for this is purely economic. The process calls for a lot of high dollar folks (instructor pilots, student pilots, ground school instructors, simulator technicians) and high dollar equipment (simulators, aircraft, training aids) to be involved. Training your own people to fly a new airplane does not directly make the company any money. So the key to cost effectiveness is to get them out of the school house as quickly as possible, so they can return to line flying, the hauling of paying passengers.

 Now, the drinking from the fire hose is bad enough, but the real problem is keeping those frogs under the basket. Yes, understanding the torrent of information poured out is a challenge, but the harder task is retaining it all long enough to put it into use. It’s like catching frogs and putting them under a basket. The first few go under and stay there, no problem. However, as the basket starts to fill with frogs, it gets harder and harder to put a new frog in without some of those already captured hopping out.

 So it is with the retention of information in general. And so it is with the gaining and holding on to life’s lessons. How many times have you said, “I’ll never do that again”?

And how many times have you done “that” again?

 Experience does count for something, for sure. It’s just that it often takes more than one hammer blow to etch that mark into the stone of our minds.

 And those marks in the stone fade with time. Too many times, for example, I’ve seen my neighbor using a chainsaw, skill saw, or even a hammer and subconsciously thought just how much fun that appeared to be. There’s just something about it, the flying sawdust, the smell of fresh cut wood. It stirs some kind of inner need.

 Now, many previous experiences have written the reality of the matter onto my cranial hard drive, but it fades over time. So, at my first opportunity, I fire up my own chainsaw and attack those fallen trees on the back of the lot.

 Sure enough, just like I thought, it’s great fun. For about ten minutes. Then the arms begin to ache, the head starts to throb from the noise, the back starts to cramp, and the chain needs sharpening. The file for the sharpening is nowhere to be found, so soon the saw is performing poorly, hangs in the log, and must be cut free with an ax. The ax slips, meets with metal, and destroys both ax and chainsaw.

I throw the whole mess in the corner in the garage, forget about clearing those trees I can’t even see way back there anyway, and march off to find some other source of “fun”.

And there it is too, right there next to the trash pile that used to be my chainsaw and ax, a stack of new lumber for building those storage shelves so badly needed. Yes, sir, ripping through new wood with a skill saw and pounding those nails will be pure pleasure.

For about ten minutes.

Things start to turn a little sour right after I cut the extension cord with the saw, frying the motor and starting a small fire in the sawdust. That wasn’t so bad, though, as I had enough boards cut already to do some serious, soul satisfying nailing.

Broke the head off my only good hammer on the fourth nail.

So I just threw the skill saw and hammer in the corner with the chainsaw and ax. Didn’t really need those shelves now anyway with nothing to store on them.

What was it about all this manual labor that made me think it was fun in the first place? I’ll remember the truth of the matter next time and hire it done. Unless, of course, I happen to see my neighbor out putting up a new fence or building a deck.

        Forgetting the realities of the joys of chainsaw use is harmless enough, I guess, but there are experiences that are best not forgotten or repeated.

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