The student becomes the over controlling teacher

I was peeling some veggies and Jonah wanted to join in, so I set him up with a peeler and a cutting board and tried to show him how to do it without hurting myself. "No!" I cried as he almost peeled his own skin. I tried several more times and then gave up. Instead I set him to cutting up some egg plant with serrated butter knife.

Not even 10 minutes later he was teaching me how to peel vegetables, except we were using soft foam blocks as vegetables and another soft foam block as the peeler. He told me very precisely exactly how I was supposed to do it and how to hold my hands so i didn't cut myself with the foam block. Actually it was good because I could show him how to do something without any danger coming to him. It kind of reminded me of a Kung Fu form.

Now here is a Noah story.

Moh Goon House (our name for the Kung fu school) has a drum that is only used for practice. This drum, taken out past it's prime on a day of wetness, got a hole beaten into it. Which means, as a drum for performing, it's sound is dead. Well it is still actually okay indoors sometimes or when other drums are not around. Jing taped it over and to cover the hole put a red envelope. There may be cardboard underneath but to make it look better the red envelope was placed on top of it. After all, it kind of looks more festive that way. And some students who didn't know there was a hole there might think the red envelope was placed there to show you where you should hit the center of the drum.

Noah has never really been allowed to play any other adult drum. And so as we have been practicing lion dance, he demanded that we tape a red envelope to our drum so it could be just like Jing's. Our drums are but toys but still the sound of the skin is muffled when it is taped and papered. I relented and cut out a Lai si to a small square (our drum is so small) and taped it to a plastic drum we also use.

I just wondered if many sacred traditions start like this. That a red envelope taped as something that was okay to do, to cover a hole, has become some sort of sacred rite that had to be done even if it took away from the sound of the drum, within a generation. That's what happens when student becomes the Sifu. Well at least in this case.