Role for Damage

This is a true story. It all happened somewhere in yesterday...

    We all have one person that we admire when we're young, whether that person deserves admiration or not. As we grow, we inevitably learn that our role models have flaws too. Sometimes those flaws make us respect them more. Other times, it makes us lose faith in them.

    I've had a few role models in the past. When I danced (from when I was 3-14) my role models were the older kids in the dance school. They were always so much better at what they did than anyone else was. I remember thinking that I could never do anything that they did. Well, it turns out that a lot of the really good dancers from the older group could do things that I could never do. I was right about that. Eventually, when all the older kids moved on to bigger and better things, I became one of the older kids that the younger ones looked up to. We were doing faster tap pieces and people from my group were always getting the main parts in the middle show (not me, though because I was never really that good). However, I realized at that point that I had become what I had admired and, well, it wasn't anything special. I was still the exact same thing as before, just older. I figure the admiration I gave to the older kids was probably just based on age, not skill. Although, a lot of them were really good.

    Somewhere in the middle of admiring the older dancers, I began to look at one of my older brothers as a role model. He was always really cool and outgoing. He had an awesome girlfriend (well, she was awesome at the time) and was amazingly talented when it came to woodworking. I remember being in my middle school woodworking class (required, not chosen) and being so frustrated that I couldn't build anything properly. These things should really be genetic. Anyways, eventually I realized something. Yes, he was good at a lot of things and a lot of people liked him, but he had his flaws too. My brother wasn't a saint. He tried to go get a tattoo against my mother's wishes when he was sixteen and my mom went up one side of him and down the other. He made mistakes too (like tattooing "MOM" on his knee. But that happened later).

    So I looked somewhere else for a role model. That brought me to authors. You see, I'm a writing major now because I've always enjoyed writing fiction. Seriously. When I was in grade five and we had to write a story, my teacher asked me a question that changed my life (not that I realized it at the time). She said, "Have you ever considered being a writer?" and my response to that was "No. I like writing, but I want to be a dancer". Shows how much I know. Anyways, my role models from high school onwards were all authors. I started with an admiration for R.A. Salvatore's work. He writes for Forgotten Realms, which is a fantasy world now owned by Wizards of The Coast. I've always loved fantasy and I thought, I could write that (for the record, I still have yet to complete a passable fantasy novel. Passable by my standards, that is). Eventually, I started to admire Agatha Christie's work. I loved the way she wrote her mysteries. There was so much foreshadowing and planning in those novels. I really didn't think I could ever manage something like that. But, like all role models, Agatha had her issues too. Once you've read a couple Agatha Christie books, you could start to predict what was going to happen all too easily. So, now I've turned to Garth Nix. Another good fiction/fantasy author. However, this one is different. I started by admiring his writing and then I read the foreword to his book of short stories. In it, he described his creative process and I realized something. He has the exact same creative process that I do. It was the first time that I looked at something an author has done and said "Hey, I already do that". It was pretty inspiring. But, like all role models I suspect that good ol' Garth will show his flaws eventually.
   
    It doesn't bother me to lose role models. They're just people. Their role model status is just there to inspire us when we need it to. When we don't need that inspiration anymore, then they just appear as regular people again. There's no science to it. I'm sure I've been a role model to someone in my past. Not sure who, but I'm sure it's happened.

    So, in honour of my past role models, I have an important assignment for you today. Go show someone how to do something today. This could be teaching them how to do their job, or how to say something in another language. Just teach something. Give someone a chance to see you as a role model, even if it's just for a minute or two.

Ciao!

(P.S. Does anybody do these assignments?)