Accidental Learning
Anyone know what a plier's knot is?
It’s day 245 in my capsule slash bubble also known as my home.
I’m kidding.
I have absolutely no idea how many days it has been just as I have no idea, half of the time, what day of the week it is, or what day of the month it is.
I’ve got a routine going and my routine got me thinking about quite a few mundane things. For instance, silly little things I’ve inculcated into my every day life mostly without giving them a second thought. None of them are earth-shattering or life-changing or worthy of a book. You know, nothing approaching self-help status or anything.
But, to be honest, these are tiny little things I do that I remember who I learned them from, sometimes where, and occasionally when, I learned them. And, almost every time I use these inconsequential-in-the-great-scheme-of-things learnings, I think about that person.
For the longest time, I was terrible with knots and ropes. Except when it came to the Windsor knot which, if I am not mistaken, is the name of the knot used to tie a tie. Of course, my father taught me to tie my tie and I wore a tie every Sunday at church when I was growing up in the north Dallas suburb of Richardson. There was the random ‘other’ occasion I would need to don a tie but religious services were the main driver of tie-wearing.
The funny and amazing thing is that I don’t remember the last time I needed to tie or tied a Windsor knot but, I’ll guarantee you, I would be able to do it. Those neural pathways are Marianas Trench deep.
My mother taught me to tie my shoelaces.
I wish I had a video of me tying my shoelaces because practically everyone who ever watched me tie my shoes during my childhood exploded in laughter or stared slack-jawed in wonder. I attribute the ridicule I took from my awkward shoe-tying style to my indifference in learning anything more about using ropes and tying knots. I probably felt like I just didn’t have the aptitude for it. My mother’s method worked fine, but, clearly, it was not standard operating procedure in the neck of the woods I grew up in.
As a consequence, I rafted for a decade without knowing any knots other than a square knot. This is the knot euphemistically referred to as a plier’s knot. Not coincidentally, I carried a pair of pliers in a holster throughout my early years of rafting. Made it a part of boating mythology.
I was also very familiar with the phrase, “If you don’t know how to tie a knot, tie a lot!”
But I didn’t start writing this to talk about the chronology of my knot education. My intention was to write about the little things I’ve learned over a lifetime, from someone I’ve shared my lifetime with, that crop up in my daily existence. And almost every time I go through these habitual motions, I think about its origins.
My older brother will tell you I am terrible about checking the shower drain for hair build up. If I lived with him for any substantial period of time, I am sure I would excel at checking for hair clogs. What I am very diligent about, however, is always closing the shower curtains in order to prevent mildew by giving the curtains a chance to dry between showers. My high school sweetheart ironed that into my psyche and nearly five decades later I am just as obsessive as ever. Because of her, I am overly cognizant of the potential of mildewing shower curtains.
The approaching winter, dropping temperatures and prolonged stay indoors compelled me recently to crank up the wood-burning stove. If, for no other reason, for the hygge it provides. (Hygge being a Scandinavian word meaning “a mood of coziness and comfortable conviviality with feelings of wellness and contentment.” It is pronounced “hue-guh.” You may also employ candles to get your hygge on).
Every time I light a fire in a wood stove, I go through the same ritual taught to me by my practice wife who learned from her scientifically-minded, do-it-yourself father. I take the newspaper and, instead of wadding it up or twisting it tight, I systematically shred the paper, tearing from the outside edge toward the fold. It follows the ‘grain’ of the newsprint and, magically, tears in a straight line. Several sheets of newspaper, properly shredded and placed between a few pieces of kindling invariably catch afire without a great deal of hassle.
For the first few years of our marriage we lived in a log cabin whose lone source of heat was a wood stove (or it could just as likely have been that we didn’t feel we could afford to use the electric heat), so uniformly ripping newspaper was firmly ingrained in my “how to start a fire” collection of brain cells.
In addition, she passed along to me the crushing of a single garlic clove with the heel of your hand placed upon a knife positioned flat which, once smashed, allows you to easily remove the tenacious papery skin. This was an “Aha!” moment for me. Previously, I avoided garlic because I didn’t want the hassle of peeling it. She might be dismayed to learn that these are the things I attribute to her but, as a reminder, I am merely reciting the mundane things that spark a memory every single time I do them.
And now we come full circle back to the art of tying and untying. . . a girlfriend in the nineties changed my world when she showed me how to loosen your common knot often found with plastic bags due to overzealous “sealers”. Since pliers don’t work well with plastic and I no longer kept pliers on my person, this simple technique came in handy if you discovered the plastic bag of pistachios you bought at the local co-op was cinched too tight and was difficult to open. Or the garbage bag from under the sink got ratcheted down and, for some reason, you needed to open it before you took it out to the curb.
It was simple.
You twist and twist and twist the plastic tail end and then push it through. The more you twist the tighter it gets and the easier it becomes to push through to free the bound plastic. She also showed me how to put a bight into one end of the plastic when you were tying the square knot to prevent that sort of “knotting” from happening. But that’s getting a little wonky. Talking about bights and such.
That’s for my other column about how I finally saw the light when it comes to rope-wrangling and knot management.
I could go on with all of these anecdotes.
Our lives are an amalgamation of all the people who have sailed alongside us. A conglomeration of the people in our orbit. A gallimaufry of ideas, interests and imaginings. Whether it’s the words we know, the phrases we utter, the beliefs we cleave to, the habits we form, the memories we cherish, the paths we chose, the challenges we met or the adventures we undertake, we are both our own selves and a composite of all that have influenced us. For better, or for worse.
Or, as my father once intoned, “For better AND for worse.”
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If you are a lover of the outdoors or a lover of watching other people suffer, soar or survive in the outdoors, AAR Nancy Enz Lill sent me a reminder that the Banff Film Festival has gone virtual this season due to you-know-what. Follow my links to buy access to their amazing films.
Also, somehow I missed this documentary titled Racing Extinction. I came across it this morning when a NASCAR driver named Leilani Münter trailed through my Twitter feed because she made a comment about knowing a young marathon runner who 8 months later is still plagued by COVID after effects. She was peeved at all of the COVID conspiracists and deniers. In any event, I haven’t seen the documentary but it looks very well done and, in addition, I was intrigued by someone who races cars, drives a Tesla, advocates for renewable energy and is endorsed by Mark Ruffalo.
An oddly strange brew in my view.
Also, this is a brief 8 minute interview/introduction with Ms. Munter, Mark Ruffalo and several others:
Thanks, as always, for spending a few minutes reading my journaling. - JLM