**Scenes from the Houston suburbs, circa 1986
I am hardly an expert in this subject. But I would like to think that I’ve been studying it since my teen years.
Talking…Versus Doing. Or as I call it in later years, Debating versus Doing. People can talk, or debate, all day long. But it doesn’t make things happen.
Everyone knows this. So why point it out?
I don’t know.
I first learned this in high school. I attended a school with 2000 students. That’s hard for my teenagers to comprehend, as they attend a school of maybe 200. Our town Fort Qu’Appelle has 2000 residents, not including the lakeside and overall valley area. “Just imagine Fort Qu’Appelle as a great big High School”, I’d say.
At my high school, there was every kind of kid grouping imaginable. Not just sports kids and non-sports kids, like rural Canadian schools. There were drama kids. Debate club kids. Accelerated academia kids. Music kids. And beyond.
Then there were sub groups and subs of sub groups. Photography award winning kids. Woodwind Quintets. Football offensive lineups.
I played French Horn in school band. So I was associated with various music groups.
But when I was 15 I picked up bass guitar. This got me into the sub-group social circles of the guitar players at school. I was the new guy, so it was kind of intimidating and exciting all at once. I originally wanted to be a guitar player. But at the eleventh hour I chose bass, as the star bass players were about to graduate and I could fill that hole. It worked for me.
Many of the kids in the guitar sub-group let everyone know they were guitar players. They talked about their playing non-stop. They air-guitared all day. They carried the latest issues of guitar magazines with their school books. They bragged about the awesome guitars and gear they owned. And they name dropped every famous player as if to say “I know who’s who and what’s up. And you don’t”.
And then judgement day came. The school talent show.
The talent show was a misleading name. More like a “hey everyone, let’s see who’s trying” kind of show. We all did our best. With dismal stage management to boot.
And the kids who talked big and bragged about guitar during the school day?
They sucked Donkey Kong. They were so horrible in every way. Bad sound. Poor playing. Hilarious stage fright.
And then there was Glenn Ackerman.
He was some new blonde haired kid that was a year younger than me. No one really paid attention to him at school. Probably because he didn’t advertise himself shamelessly. He was quiet.
But all of these other kids were talking about Glenn. “He is an AMAZING guitarist”, they’d say.
He joined our school’s half-assed jazz band, where I played bass. Sure enough, Glenn played like a seasoned pro. For real. He had the mature playing of an adult.
Glenn was a primary learning event for me.
Talking about yourself is less effective than others talking about you.
That has something to do with doing things versus talking about things.
This lesson struck me early in life. But it was easy for me to adapt as I was never a good talker anyway.