“Mr. House – you threw a pencil. You HAVE to go out in the hallway!”
I loved teaching 5th and 6th grade Boys Sunday School. They are smart enough to notice and challenge you, but also young enough to mostly follow directions. On this morning, I had heard a kid at the other team ask for a pencil and gently tossed it to him…
… and our approved Ground Rules for the room said “No throwing”… which Stuart had called me on. Correctly, and so here I was, standing in the hallway with my nose to the wall. The Sunday School superintendent who knew me well, walked by, and said nothing…
…the leader who has not said thank you in years…
Somewhere behind you is a teacher, a coach or a first boss who saw something in you before you did. You have told the story about them a dozen times. You have almost certainly never told them.
…the singer who wrote a song about his children and found his father in it…
Bono was born Paul Hewson in Dublin on May 10, 1960. His mother, Iris, died in 1974, when he was 14. Late in 1998, U2 went into Hanover Quay Studios in Dublin with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, and the Edge brought in a loop of strings. The words grew out of a day in Killiney with Bono’s daughters, Jordan and Eve, when the Kite crashed and the girls wanted to go home.
Bono first understood the song as being about his children, and about a day when they would not need him anymore. The Edge, who helped write the words, heard something else: it was really about Bono’s father, who was ill with cancer. Bono could not see it, the Edge said, but he could. Bob Hewson died on August 21, 2001, at 75, and at the shows just before, Bono had been dedicating Kite to him on stage.
A Legacy is what the kids you taught hand to their own kids.
…the song where his voice came back…
Kite is the 5th track on All That You Can’t Leave Behind, released on October 30, 2000, and it was never a single. Bono said it was the song where his voice returned after years of trouble with it, and that when he hit one high note, everyone in the studio almost fell over. In 10 years, he said, U2 had not heard a note like that, full voice.
The song he thought was about letting his daughters go turned out to be about his father letting go of him. Most of what we pass on works that way. We think we are teaching one thing, and they carry away another.
…what I learned when I renewed the list…
Most of those kids are now parents of kids their age… and I wonder what Legacy they remember from our class.
And, I actually use that same approach to Ground Rules with teams I work with. It is amazing to see what an impact it has – to simply document what we are going to agree to be together, and how we will work together.
Sunday is the day to renew the line that runs back through the people who taught you. A page in your own handwriting will outlast every email you send this year.
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: Find the address of 1 person who taught you when you were young, write them 1 page by hand, and mail it.
If writing that page opens up a bigger question about what you want to hand on, I would love to help you renew it. Schedule time with me here.
Mail it Monday, and let it fly like a… Kite
