Sunday, October 28, 2012

Plan A

Last weekend i was at Solan.
There is this small ground behind my house where we used to spend most of our evenings.

Standing on my terrace i was reliving a few memories of my childhood in that very ground.
Suddenly i see a father son duo come in the ground with a small bicycle.


The son was obviously excited for the new cycle
 but at the same time he was terrified at the chances of him getting injured in the process of learning.




Father starts the tutorial ...
"See son...these are the breaks..you press these if you want to stop....this is the paddle...this is the bell ..in case some body comes and you want him out of your way...thats the handle...this is like the steering of our car."

The father asks him to sit on the saddle and start paddling while he was holding on to the seat with one hand.

Son very reluctantly sat on the saddle ...insisting his father to keep holding the cycle in case he falls.

Next instruction was to look ahead on the road and start paddling.
Child tries to do as directed...
but he continuously looked back to check if his dad  was still holding the cycle or not.

I was watching both of them with a great sense of Deja Vu.
All this had happened with me...and with almost each one of us while we were trying to learn cycling.

So the training continued...after half an hour or so...the child hadn't progressed much.
He was merely able to sit on the seat and fall in the next 5-7 second to one side or the other.

Father who was a patient tutor in the beginning was now getting irritated.

"BETA .....I  am holding the cycle...you are not going to fall...why can't you just paddle ahead ?"
With this assurance the child started again but things were stuck as they were an hour ago,

I could see a deadlock in the process.
Plan A was to teach Cycling to the kid...
Plan B was to teach Cycling to the kid injury free....

All those who know cycling ...
will know that they learn't cycling when someone made them sit on the cycle and just pushed them in the ground without any security.

The inital momentum of the push would carry the rider some distance ...
Then comes the moment when he realises that there is no one holding him.

Rider panics...starts paddling like crazy....in a moment of adrenaline rush he falls.
When he falls he realizes the fall was not that bad...plus he knows that he rode the bike all by himself...who cares if it was just for a few seconds.

Rider gets up again...dusts himself off...and asks that someone to give that initially dreaded PUSH once more.

This is the formula that gets people going.

Whereas more the father tries to comfort his child of not falling ..
more the child gets worried about the security his dad has assured
and lesser are the chances of him focusing on the Road.

After some 2 hours of trying..assuring and falling.
The duo went home...child was a bit demotivated...father a bit frustrated.

I also came back wishing the child gets that much dreaded PUSH really soon.







Because if he doesn't ...
He would always keep worrying about stabilizing the PLAN B. 
and the PLAN A shall always remain un-executed.

5 comments:

Bansi said...

I guess faher had to infuse so much trust in son that he starts paddling without looking back.. Knowing if he falls father won,t let him fall down"......
I that case Plan A and B both area executed.

Anonymous said...

I liked the way you said what you did say.

Rohit Sharma.

Isha said...

Its a nice cute story :)..but i feel you should have explained in detail the message you are trying to give.Abrupt ending lagi mjhe

theINSOUCIANT said...

Nice one !! :)

Sanchit421 said...

well said !!