Childhood. That stage in life everyone experiences, when everything is new and the only limit is your own imagination. As a young boy, I was very much the stereotype. A stick was a sword, the ground was lava, every tree was a tower to be scaled, and every bush held dragons to be slain.
I was a lucky child; I grew up with plenty of amazing role models around me, many of whom were more than willing to join me in my imaginative play. My father was a kind and intelligent man who would eagerly don an eye patch and plastic sword for a pirating adventure in our backyard, and he was always the one to promote sharing and fairness between my brother and me. My parents were, and still are, part of a large and welcoming group of close friends who all took it upon themselves to teach us some of the most important lessons of life, mostly through games of tag and hide-and-go-seek. It might sound odd, but in those chaotic moments of play, that's where I learned the most about how to treat the people around me, how I should value myself, and what sort of person I wanted to be. However, as the recruiter of volunteers for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northwest Washington, I meet a lot of children in our community who won't get the same experience I had.
While I can acknowledge that my experience might not be the norm for all children, I know that mentoring can take on many different forms. I get a lot of questions from potential mentors about what mentoring really means, because people tend to assume that mentoring is the same as tutoring and educating, but that is really a minimal portion of what mentors do. Mentoring, as it applies to each individual, is a nebulous term. In short, a mentor is a friend, a confidant, a hero, an authority figure and above all else, a role model.
Since I am constantly trying to find people who are willing to "take the leap" and mentor to a child in the community who doesn't have an adult role model, I decided to practice what I preach, and I signed up to be a mentor. I was matched with a seventh-grade boy at a local middle school in the School Buddies Program; we were scheduled to meet every Friday at 3 p.m., just after school got out. I couldn't imagine that this kid would want to stay an extra hour on campus, with all the promises of the weekend and his friends so close, but as it turned out, I was enough.
Together we discovered that we are both constant doodlers, we are both big video gamers, and we both have a penchant for silly cartoons. In the many hours we've spent talking over the last year there have been a few telling moments where I witness my friend grow and mature before my eyes. One week we talk for a few minutes about how his outburst must have made the teacher feel, and the next week I witness him talking respectfully to the receptionist. One week we talk about supernovas and colliding planets, and the next he is talking about a book he read on astronomy. It is an amazing experience, witnessing this and knowing that I had a part in these developments and that I was successful as a role model.
When I tell people I am a mentor at Big Brothers Big Sisters, they ask say "Really? What you do together?" and while it may look like we are just hanging out, what's happening underneath is a complex tapestry of building positive self-esteem, demonstrating respectful behavior and asking thought-provoking questions. A year into my match, and I can tell you with 100 percent confidence that this is an experience that I wouldn't trade for anything. Thanks to Big Brothers Big Sisters, for one hour, every Friday, I get the rare experience of being a kid again, where everything is new and the only limit is my own imagination.
ABOUT WINDOW ON MY WORLD
Window On My World is an occasional essay in Monday's Bellingham Herald that allows Whatcom County residents to share their passion for what they do, an idea or cause they support. Send your Window On My World, which must be no more than 700 words, to Julie.shirley@bellinghamherald.com.
