Garage Doors Opened Wide – A Mentoring Month Moment

When I was a kid, I liked to hang around in my grandfather’s garage.  I remember three things about that (to a diminutive me) cavernous space – the riding lawn mower;  the refrigerator that was always stocked with old-fashioned soda pop, and the workbench.  My grandfather was a stone cutter and his workbench was a marvel of interesting tools, as well as the common array of belts, hoses, oil cans, screwdrivers, hammers, wrenches, and whatnot.  He wasn’t what one would call a tinkerer but he was more of that common sense breed who raised a family during the Depression and hence, knew how to thriftily keep things working out  of necessity.  With a bottle of raspberry soda in hand, I would watch him work.  I suppose in 1967 this was not an uncommon sight. From a “street’s eye view”  - a kid watching an adult work with the garage door opened wide.

The thrift of the Depression Generation is in the past.  We live, even in hard economic times, in a disposable-minded world where broken stuff is just thrown away and replaced with new, and where if the broken can be fixed, it is done by “experts”.  The miniaturization of technology, and micro-controllers performing what an appliance does,  has led to this, and very few dare to even crack open the thing to look inside.  Instead of residing temporarily on the workbench, it is placed permanently into the dumpster.

This is sad.   This is a waste.

The good thing however is the rise of the Maker Movement.  It appears that the “do-it-yourself” attitude is not dead.  Doggedly, with the help of new technology to even the playing field for the common person, the ability to tinker, to repair, to repurpose, redesign, or experiment is out there.  Things that can’t be fixed such as obsolete printers, telephones,  and VCRs have wonderful motors, LEDs, and buttons that spark creativity. Today’s innovations give the tinkerer access to tools that the professional scientist could only dream of in 1967.   The workbench of 2014 looks a bit different than the one from 1967 but work is being done – which is the point – and kids really could benefit by looking on.  The question is – is the garage door open?

Mentoring is not just done by folks, matched with youth, overseen by the “experts”.  Mentoring, in its true sense is the day-to-day interaction of an adult with a child.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were a city with neighborhoods  of open garage doors.  Garage doors opened wide revealing workbenches strewed with tools, with both completed and  unfinished projects and prototypes.  Most importantly, with adults tinkering, kids watching, adults watching, kids tinkering, and both collaborating.  Both with soda pop in hand.

The unsafe world in which we live is marked with closed garage doors.  Our neighborhood is populated by the unknown and we, in the safety of our own homes, intend to keep it that way.  It will be a slow process indeed undoing our present mistrustful attitudes, assuring others that we are OK, and rewiring youth to view most strangers as decent.  But fixing the problems of the world is not supposed to be easy.  The first step will always be a small one.  How can you get involved?  Do you know your neighbors?   Do you know the kid that walks by your house every day? What does he/she do after school?  Have you met his/her family?  Can you start the ball rolling?

Maybe just opening your garage door wide from time to time would be a good start.