Episode 73: On Mentors

Transcript

i've mentioned on the show before that when i was late teens and early 20s i while i was going
to school i also worked as a diesel tractor and trailer mechanic for a company that hauled mostly
well mostly steel but some other stuff too it was a situation where a friend's family owned the
business uh his family his dad kind of ran the office area and his uncle ran the the shop so the
person that i you know sort of looked at as my i guess he i mean he was he was my boss was uh my
buddy's uncle they mostly brought us in originally just to like fix some stuff around the yard do some
landscaping but the more i was there the more i kind of got involved in stuff in the shop aside from
that though he also my uh this guy my boss would also have us go and do some work at his house you
know move some stuff around fix a thing over here kind of like light renovation type of work and
painting so i remember he had gotten this duplex with uh like old hardwood floors he wanted us to
go and paint the walls uh and he the thing about him he um just generally speaking everything he had
was like in some state of disarray right like all of his tools they were always broken and like he was
he could be kind of cheap sometimes so like he wouldn't really get you the materials you needed half
of the time and but whatever it was just you know we were we were learning how to do this stuff
so he has to go paint the walls right and he left us um you know a couple buckets of paint just white
paint and then a tarp to put down but it wasn't a cloth tarp it was like a plastic tarp like a clear
plastic i don't know three or five ply kind of tarp so we put this thing down and what inevitable what
happened here was that we were painting and things were going fine there were some drips and stuff onto
the tarp and we thought that was fine it was me and my my buddy who were here doing this
and then what what happened was because a the tarp was plastic and b it was see-through it sort of
became hard to tell which side of the tarp the paint drips were on so what happened through the
course of this painting extravaganza was that a lot of you know long story short a lot of white paint
got onto his dark hardwood floors and looking back you know after another 20 plus years of
painting rooms and doing renovations and things i will say a lot of paint got on those floors this
was not like a little bit right now working for this guy at the shop he would get aggravated about
things uh maybe if they weren't done right or weren't done quick enough or he thought you know we
were screwing around or whatever but over his house uh after all this um he didn't he didn't get
angry about it and looking back i'm kind of surprised it became something of a running joke
uh because then in the future he would say he would have us go and he owned he had a duplex that he lived
in with some neighbors downstairs and then he also had another property that he rented out so he kind of
did some rental stuff and he would have us go and you know do some painting and stuff there when they
were like transitioning tenants or whatever and the joke would always be oh yeah i'm gonna have you go
over to my other my other property uh you can go and paint the floors right it became like a running
joke like anytime he wanted us to go do some work at his house he'd tell us we were going to go paint
the floors he was one of you know several mentors that i had along the way when i think about a mentor
what i think about is typically someone who you probably aren't related to they in other words and
not that it matters it's just you know they don't have to take you under their wing they they kind of
choose to or it develops organically they teach you some stuff along the way it's a little different
than a boss relationship i mean i've seen this in several times where someone who is a boss of some
sort becomes a mentor to someone myself included so the relationship can develop in that way but it's
a different type of relationship than just some sort of like work based reporting relationship but it's
you know they they teach you kind of bring you along um offer advice it's somewhere between
like uh it's almost somewhere between like a boss relationship and a friendship relationship in my
mind i suppose like it it has elements of of both sometimes presumably a mentor has some experience to
share but does it in a way that's almost more akin to a peer or friendship relationship i have found
with good with good mentor relationships anyway however you end up defining it for yourself but
those mentors along the way and i i had several and they fill in almost parts of your life that you
wouldn't have gotten otherwise is what i've found you know this guy for instance you know i grew up in a
household uh my parents weren't particularly savvy with tools or fixing things or renovations or cars
or mechanics or anything like that right so by the time i got done high school i had a bit of a gap
there like i knew maybe a little bit about fixing some stuff but like not much and so taking this job
at a trucking yard and having this friend's uncle who kind of helped me learn some things along the
way it's a wonder he ever put up with me at all i mean i think the first time he asked me to go get
him a wrench i brought him a pair of pliers or something you know i mean i i didn't know but that's
been a big piece of my life ever since is and i always liked that stuff i just never had anyone that
really sat me down and taught me right so ever since then like i because of this person i have been able to
fix a lot of stuff around my various houses do certain renovation work i can work on cars work
on trucks work on you know lawn mowers he used to have me fix his boats you know learning my way
around tools and fixing things and some mechanic work and that those sorts of things came from him
and it's because he had the patience to let me go paint his floors and i think that's the piece that i
want to get across here is having having a mentor is a wonderful thing and if you ever get a chance
to be a mentor what you're buying into as a mentor i think is is patience i mean you need to be i should
say you need to be patient because you are buying into allowing someone to kind of mess your shit up for
for a while for a lack of a better phrase every good mentoring experience that i've been through
where i've been the mentee those mentors that were good were exceptionally patient and allowed
this special balance of room for messing up and room for error while also providing a certain degree
of a safety net it's not like he sent me off to paint someone else's house he sent me off to paint
his house so baked in there is both both room to mess up because of his patience but a safety net
because it's his not someone else's right if i'd gone to if i had a paying gig to go paint someone
else's house and then painted the floors instead that probably wouldn't have gone over so well but
because it was his house and because he had we never sat down and said oh i'm your mentor now or
something but that relationship had developed people need family and people need friends
throughout their life but if you get a chance to either be a mentor or if you've if you have a chance to
have a great mentor it fills in certain gaps that i think both friendships and family miss
it can help fill in gaps and holes in your in your world and in your worldview and in your life and
in your experience that maybe you might miss out on otherwise and if you ever get a chance
to mentor someone and it's almost like one of those things like when you know you know like you
you know i i don't i'm not a big believer in that whole like you sit down for like almost a
business style meeting and say like i am your mentor now okay i am your mentee right like that's
that seems very robotic and forced the good ones i've always had have developed organically and
naturally but those things are have always been they've always held a special status to me
and i know that i wouldn't be the same person without having had those mentors over over time
and so if you have the ability to do to become one of these people to someone just remember patience
is probably the most important thing that you can bring to that table you need to invite someone
into your world and allow them to mess it up for a while and have the patience to see through that
because you know you might end up being one of a handful of the most important people
that have ever come to pass through that person's life