teaching an old dog young tricks.

My boss is a bankruptcy lawyer.  His son, also his partner, refers to his father in a business-like manner calling him "Wen" rather than dad.  It is strange.  I was hired at the firm as a receptionist for the morning hours.  It is a quiet job, answering phones, making copies, smiling at our clients who, I am certain, roll their eyes inwardly when I say, "Have a great day!"  I'm bankrupt, lady. 

The unconventional portion of this job is that I have become the boss's personal typist.  He is from the old school, for lack of a more perfectly suited term, and he prefers to write things out shorthand on a legal pad.  This is ridiculous considering the changing times... also considering that he is writing a novel which will, eventually, have to be entirely typed.  He, however, chooses to remain the same and reject modern commonalities such as voicemail, Microsoft Word and spell checker.  

In my initial interview I felt somewhat sheepish and young and got the distinct feeling of being looked down upon.  However, once my boss realized what a wealth of technological, vocabulary and internet intelligence I was (really not that much, but much more than he), he began to treat me with greater interest.  I was a daily champion at work, a great tutor in modern writing tools.

Kyle, my seventeen-year-old brother, called me from Florida this evening as I was eating dinner.  He was trying to unlock something on the computer which I, once a resident of our household, had set up with a password that he didn't know.  After I told him the key he, in a moment of sheer other-mindedness, asked me how I was doing--a big thing from the subdued child who despises talking on the phone.  And I, on a whim of really wanting to chat with him, took the bait and told him.  

"I am studying for the GRE."

"The what?" he said.

"The GRE.  It's a test to get into graduate school.  I have it on Thursday.  It's kind of like a vamped up SAT.  But there is math, which I am terrible at, so I'm pretty much SOL."

"Maybe I could help you," he said, laughing because of the reference to an expletive as well as the fact that his realm of mathematical knowledge exceeded mine when he was fourteen.  

"Do you have time?" I said, chuckling sheepishly.

"Yeah, I do."  I heard him smile.

We spent the following thirty minutes on the phone.  I'd tell him the practice problem and he'd write it down.  He walked me through the steps of solving for y, and told me the formulas for finding the volume and surface area of a cylinder.  He reminded me that you can't have a negative exponent and that the easy formulas for triangle solving only work for the right triangles which, for my information, have one ninety-degree angle.

I chewed on the end of my pen, scribbling notes down on the yellow legal pad, asking all kinds of questions and, more than once, "Wait, say that again.  I don't understand."  Then he'd go back and try to explain it all over again.

Kyle was totally patient, an excellent and well versed teacher.  At the end as I scanned my notes to make sure I'd asked him all of my questions I heard him snicker on the other end of the phone a thousand miles away.

"You know," he said, "I charge ten bucks an hour for tutoring."

Laughing, I said, "You can collect from mom and dad.  Tell them it's part of my continuing education."

Maybe, in continuing education, instructors come from behind, like cars coming up to pass in your blind spot, and surprise you with insight you never could've learned from an elder.

Thanks, Kyle :)