The tiny battery cell in my computer gave up and I had to replace it. I got a technician to do it for me. He cheerfully did it on Saturday evening, reset the timings taught me how to use the antivirus program in my computer to scan every few days and left. Today being a holiday for our Republic Day, he will return tomorrow to take the CPU for servicing, as he suggests that I do it as it is full of dust and other undesirable things inside it. Hopefully, I should get the CPU back tomorrow evening.
After he left however, every time I booted up the computer it started doing strange things and I could not figure out what to do. Luckily, Ranjan, our son was at home and he reset the programs and it has been working alright since then. Son teaching father case number one.
My father wanted to get a couple of his reference books covered with brown paper as the original covers were looking a bit shabby with much use. He asked me to help him with it, and I popped across to a neighborhood shop, got some wrapping paper and did the job in a few minutes. I am pretty good at it as this was something that we had to learn when in school to protect our books so that they could be handed down to younger siblings or more needy students.
My father was very impressed with the finished work and asked me to teach him how to do it so that, he need not trouble me again when other books needed such covering. So, with much flourish, I took a couple of old books, some old newspaper a pair or scissors and showed him how to do it, let him do it on his own under my supervision and left him alone to practice. After some time, he called me over and proudly showed off the outcome of his latest craft learning experience. I could tell that he was very pleased with himself. Son teaching father case number two.
Subsequently, I was musing about some of the things that my father had taught me when I was young and went back fifty years to when he taught me how to drive a car. We had a huge Chrysler Automatic Transmission car, which he thought was not quite the car in which a lad of my years could learn how to drive and so got another car, a small Morris Minor with floor stick shift gear. He first asked me to watch him use the clutch, brake and accelerator pedals and how he coordinated the foot and hand to shift gears. He then changed seats with me and asked me to drive while giving running instructions. After a few tries of releasing the clutch with much trepidation and getting it all wrong, and a few knocks to the head to get it right, I got it right and there was no looking back after that. He let me drive under his supervision for a while, and let me loose on my own, while he watched from a distance and gave me pass marks for having learnt how to drive. I of course had to learn the rules, signs etc on my own. In those days, many of these were taught in our classes on Civics so it was not too difficult.
I, in turn taught my son to drive.
Three generations of top down teaching of one subject and in the last couple of days, bottom up teaching on different subjects! I could not of course give a few knocks on the head to either when I taught them! Nor could my son to me I suppose!
Did you get knocks on your head when you learnt something from a parent? Did you carry on the tradition when you taught your child something?