Maybe experience is the best teacher.

Just take a look around the world of sports these days.

Mark Martin, age 50, is winning NASCAR races and showing the kids half his age how it’s done.

Tim Wakefield, 42, is named to his first Major League Baseball All-Star game. He doesn’t pitch, but the knuckleballer is there in case the game goes into extra innings and American League manager Joe Maddon needs someone who can pitch a few innings. The young guys? Humph, they’re only good for an inning or two before they’re tired.

Tom Watson, 59, fires a 65 in the first round of the British Open, a tournament he first won 32 years ago, before many of the other players on the course with him (including Tiger Woods) were even born.

While stories like this are probably not the reason the province a few years ago got rid of mandatory retirement at age 65, there’s no doubt that in many occupations, the more experienced worker is not someone who should be shoved aside because he or she has hit some magic number of candles on the birthday cake.

In many professions in B.C. today, we hear about the need for skilled workers to replace people who are close to the age when they want to retire. The sooner we can get those new workers in place, the more chance they’ll have to learn from the older workers.

We have seen situations where a young worker and an older one are teamed on a job to fix a problem. The young worker immediately hauls out all their new equipment and starts looking for very complicated solutions.

The older worker usually checks to make sure things are plugged in, first.

It’s the simple solutions that usually take the longest to learn. That’s the greatest lesson our older workers can give their “replacements.”

—Prince George Free Press

(Black Press)