WWhat were you thinking?”
Somewhere I read that young people should not be asked this question when they act impulsively. With their immature brains, their actions often precede careful consideration, so asking for a thought process is pointless at best and hurtful at worst.
My father used to say those words to me, although not with anger. I still remember his confused squint, the quick tip of his head, the baffled tone — and the excruciating mortification I always felt.
I’ve said it myself to young folks, while trying not to sound judgmental. I’ve also heard people say it not just to young people but to spouses and parents and friends — sometimes condescendingly, other times with amusement. Certainly, I have berated myself with those words moments after stepping onto bad ice or turning loose a dog who is certain to run away for hours.
My first memory of hearing the question happened when the three of us siblings were young teens, waiting beside our father’s Cessna 180 while he unloaded his gear and siphoned fuel from the plane’s auxiliary tank to resupply our bush home. He’d just turned his back to put something into his sled when the siphon slipped from the gas can, falling into the snow. Quickly, I snatched it up and shoved the still-flowing tube back into the gas can—realizing too late that the now-snowy hose was contaminating his precious fuel.
Daddy turned and saw the problem. “Who did that?” he asked.
Ray, my domineering yet loyally protective big brother, boldly took the fall. “I did,” he coolly lied while I stood dumbstruck, sick, and grateful.
Daddy cocked his head, frowning. “What were you thinking?” he asked, to which Ray had no answer. I didn’t either, having acted with thoughtless immaturity.
I heard those words again in my early 20s when our parents returned after several days of travel. My father, having recently invented and constructed an innovative underground freezer powered by our 12-volt battery system, eagerly asked how his invention performed.
“Just fine,” I reported. “I turned it on for two hours each evening, after the sun left the solar panels.” Even as I spoke, my logic sounded completely irrational. Of course, you should use the power while it’s being created to avoid excessively cycling the batteries.
So I got the confused squint and head tilt—and the dreaded words, “What were you thinking?”
Likewise, when my sister Miki and I were trying to figure out why the old outboard wasn’t running. There seemed to be a loose wire that didn’t look right. We yanked it off, but never solved the problem.
“Why would you do that?” Daddy said later. “I put that wire in to fix the ground.”
Well, uh, guess we just weren’t thinking?
Sometimes, a simple lack of thinking isn’t the problem so much as a sheer absence of reliable information or experience with which to make informed decisions. We have occasionally been astonished, shocked, or dismayed by choices that some visitors or newcomers make — from thinking they can live off the land to assuming a remote area is up for grabs when it may be private property. We’ve seen people who didn’t realize a license is required to hunt, or that an Alaska residency is required to set a subsistence fish net. Other people show up intending to stay forever, only to flee after they discover the mosquitoes, or the difficulty of packing water, or the never-ending chore of finding firewood.
Why wouldn’t they research that stuff before selling everything and moving to Alaska? It’s impossible to say just what they are thinking.
Miki and I helped our brother build our first remote trapping cabin when we were all in our early 20s, choosing a site next to a tumbled-down cabin which the decades had reduced to an overgrown hummock. A flat spot beside the relic looked perfect. Did we notice the moat-sized drainage ditch surrounding the old cabin? Yes. Did we think about that? No. Were we surprised when springwater soaked the dirt floor inside the new cabin? Yes. Should we have been surprised? No. Only with experience and maturity did we learn such lessons.
Watching puppies impulsively learn about the perilous world provides endless laughs, like when they discover water isn’t solid. Without thinking, they step in confidently — only to topple under and pop up sneezing and horrified. As they bumble into predicaments, falling into holes or getting stuck in tight spots, they learn to think and evaluate their surroundings, eventually maturing and growing more discerning as they realize this big place isn’t as safe and predictable as they first assumed.
As humans, we go through a similar process of learning to think, and as we mature, we gradually start assessing risks before plunging in. Unfortunately, as that spring-in-the-cabin incident revealed, you also need experience to recognize and interpret clues.
Now in my mid-60s, I feel I finally have enough experience to negotiate the hazards of bush life. Yet these days I’m not so tough anymore, and I am sometimes forgetful, so I guess maturity is a trade-off. Now I don’t even remember where I was going with this. Let me see ... what was I thinking?
