SELLEY GETS SERIOUS
It couldn’t all be casino junkets and horseback riding, could it? I figured I ought to cruise into autumn with at least a few genuinely useful self-improvements under my belt
My editors suggested I spend a few weeks of the summer improving myself and write about my experiences. At first vaguely insulted, I eventually conceded I might be less than perfect, and decided to grab the bull by the horns. I’m not sure what would most appal Mrs. Mardall, my tough- love, no- nonsense grade four homeroom teacher: the state of my penmanship; the fact that cursive writing is no longer on the Ontario curriculum; or the techniques Ruth Rumack’s Learning Space uses to teach it to children whose parents consider it essential.
And well they might. It’s more efficient, for starters. “You can get your ideas out quickly (and) focus more on the content of what you’re writing as opposed to the formation of the letters,” said Rumack. But it’s more than that.
“Cursive is a really interesting exercise in the brain, in that we can see in MRIs that when you write in cursive, compared to printing and compared to typing … both sides of the brain are being activated,” she explained. “That really stimulates de- velopment of language, it stimulates cognitive development and it helps with memory long-term.”
I don’t remember exactly how I was taught cursive, but I know it had to be on a proper slant, and Mrs. Mardall insisted on arrow- straight lines and perfect loops. And I know it worked, for a few years at least, because for some reason my mother kept a bitchy letter I sent home from camp when I was 12. Mrs. Mardall would have crumpled it up and thrown it at me, but I’d kill to have that handwriting back.
It isn’ t even one thing anymore: i n 100 earnest tries, my handwriting won’t look the same way twice. So I asked Rumack to start from scratch, like she and her staff do with kids — and it was some time before I even picked up a pencil. She led me through a series of warm-up exercises: a balance board, jumping in and out of a hula- hoop, stretching out my hands. Strong core muscles help with handwriting, she explained. We practised writing perfect connected Cs — a motion key to many cursive letters — on a blackboard, and then in shaving cream.
At this point I suspect Mrs. Mardall would have rolled her eyes, stormed out of the room and furiously chainsmoked half a pack of Players. But it’s not just for fun, Rumack insisted. “There’s all sorts of little nerve endings in the bottom of your finger, and when you press against it you get feedback,” she said. “It gives your brain that feedback it needs to remember the shape of the letter and the motion of your hand.”
I’m not sure I buy all that, but I can see how the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum she uses would appeal to the biggest audience and reduce frustration for kids who don’t take to it naturally. It strips away the flourishes and eschews the slant for a straight up- anddown approach. As modelled in the workbook I’m using, I think it looks … utilitarian, with gusts to ugly. And I sure don’t remember a lower-case b looking like an l with a ledge to the right of it.
IT’S KIND OF AMAZING THAT FIRST AID SKILLS ARE CONSIDERED ‘NICE-TO-HAVES’ RATHER THAN ESSENTIALS. THEY ARE, AFTER ALL, PRETTY SIMPLE. — CHRIS SELLEY
But kids can use this simplified method as a base to develop their own unique style, Rumack argued. And I’m giving it a shot myself. “Legibility is beautiful,” as Rumack put it, and I have many miles to go.
CHESS
When I was a kid, I thought chess was for nerds — which is weird, in hindsight, because my best friend Ian played chess, and he wasn’t a nerd, and in any event I wasn’t exactly captaining the hockey team between clarinet lessons, math tutoring and obsessing over baseball statistics.
According to a 2012 poll, only 23 per cent of Americans play chess. But in my experience, people tend to ask you to play, not whether you can. Perhaps chess players get a passive- aggressive frisson from this. If so, I wanted in on the action all the more.
Chess teacher Yelizaveta Orlova, a Woman Candidate Master ( that means she’s really good) who has represented Canada in numerous international events, agreed to show me the basics — via Skype from Seattle, using a virtual online board we could both see and manipulate.
Thanks to various false starts over the years, I fairly quickly recalled and internalized what the pieces do. “Even though he’s the strongest, he’s the laziest,” Orlova said of the king, which can move in any direction but only one square. “The king just likes to sit on his throne and eat.” ( You can tell she teaches kids.)
As endlessly complex as the game is, it’s easy to see why parents would want their kids to learn it: research shows it stimulates all kinds of analytical and problemsolving skills; it takes real, structured effort to improve — you can’t just discoverymath your way to proficiency. And unlike in many “real sports” nowadays, there’s none of this namby- pamby everyone’s- a- winner nonsense.
Research also demonstrates the benefits of starting young, so I’m snookered there. But I’m content to plug away getting better in hopes of having a fighting chance against similarly minded once-in-a-while players.
In the meantime, I wanted a fair fight for my first in-person match. So I challenged my aforementioned friend Ian’s three sons. Or, rather, I didn’t. Patrick, 11, took his sweet time whittling me down to my king, which I duly surrendered. I feared Finn, nine, the most, which might explain my appalling performance: at each astonishing blunder he would swoop in, cackling, and I was quickly dispatched. I fared little better against Jack, six, though I did successfully stave off a plan he and his dad concocted to beat me in six moves.
In fact, I remarked to Ian, I lasted longer than I thought I would against all of them.
“Yeah, well, they don’t play very much,” he replied with a smirk.
FIRST AID
Helping people is in Ubaldo Garcia’s blood. His father was a volunteer for the local ambulance service in Tuxtepec, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. And by the age of 14, so was he — driving around town in a dilapidated Volkswagen Beetle with no passenger seat.
“I had a light, a siren, and I would respond to emergencies,” Garcia told me at Canadian Red Cross headquarters. “Back then, it was a little more laid-back.”
Garcia moved with his parents to Canada in 2002 via South Carolina, where he trained with the Red Cross as a lifeguard. In Toronto he became a first-aid instructor, disaster-management volun- teer and, finally, a trainer of first-aid instructors.
“Everybody needs it,” Garcia said of the basic first-aid course he was about to give me.
Indeed, it’s kind of amazi ng that these skills are considered “nice- to- haves” rather than essentials. They are, after all, pretty simple: a quick flow-chart-style assessment of the basic circumstances that require intervention, followed by turning, hitting, compressing and otherwise manipulating parts of the body as appropriate — and always calling 911 or having someone else do it and report back.
There’s even a Red Cross app that will take you through the procedures I learned, and many others. Say you’ve got an unconscious person. “Are they breathing?” the app asks you. If yes, you roll them onto their side and tilt their head back to open the airway. If no, you start chest compressions right away — and if you’re certified, administer “rescue breaths” after each 30 compressions.
Is s omeone choking? Whack them “firmly on their back between the shoulder blades five times,” and follow that up with “five quick abdominal thrusts,” the app advises.
But there is no substitute for real instruction. I didn’t know about the back-whacking procedure for choking, and you really need to know the feeling of the human diaphragm against your fist to get the abdominal thrusts right. I didn’t know you’re more likely to choke when you’re drunk, on account of your overly relaxed epiglottis.
“When you’re bar-hopping at three o’clock in the morning you’re most likely to choke on poutine,” Garcia cautions. So chew your food, drunky!
Had I attempted chest compressions per the app, I wouldn’t have used nearly as much force as Garcia insisted I inflict on the dummy. If there’s an automated external defibrillator (AED) nearby, it will actually tell you if you’re doing it wrong, prompt you to give compressions or a breath and tell everyone to stand clear before you — anyone, that is, certified or not — administer a shock.
I haven’t been that impressed with a piece of technology since my first iPhone. But without the course, I’d never have trusted myself with it. (It almost seems like science fiction.) These are the kinds of skills you hope you never have to use, of course. But I can’t imagine the horrible feeling of needing them and not having them — and now I don’t have to.