Greg Bean - Memory Illustration

Without context, this illustration is nonsensical, so I'm including the story behind it.  (I'm going to miss hearing the stories about everyone's illustrations.  In fact, since we're not in class, I think everyone should include at least a paragraph about the memory or idea behind their illustration.  Just sayin'...)

Gaining experience can be painful, but for rookie cops it’s critically important.  Their continued survival depends on it.

            The best lecture I ever heard on the value of experience was given by John McChord, a good cop, excellent Field Training Officer, and former combat chopper pilot.  I was sitting with John and a rookie officer on the steps of a home where the young officer had rushed into a fight with a large drunk.  When the medics were done treating the rookie’s swollen eye, John sat him down and told him about the hundred mile an hour chicken.

            One day, while John was relocating a Vietnamese family and all their stuff to a village outside the combat zone, one of their rangy, mean-spirited roosters busted loose from his makeshift bamboo cage and bolted for daylight. Viet Nam was hot and the chopper crew was flying with the doors open.  In other words, daylight led to a 120 mph slipstream and a 5,000 foot drop.  When the rooster hit the slipstream, he disappeared in a burst of feathers.  John and his co-pilot were immediately intrigued.  What would happen to a chicken who finds himself airborne at 5000 feet?  He banked the chopper into a steep 180 degree turn and soon saw the bird tumbling, claws over beak, toward the earth.

            Now this was no fat, feathered pig; no clipped-wing, pen-raised fryer.  This bird had all the necessary equipment to achieve a safe landing, so John was not surprised when the rooster seemed to find his bearings and regain flight control.  Badly shaken and unaccustomed to seeing the earth from five thousand feet, the chicken decided that the best course of action was to get down quickly.  Accordingly, he pulled in his landing gear, tucked his wings back, and began a power dive for terra firma.  Fascinated, John followed the bird, which now resembled a chubby lawn dart plummeting to earth at a hundred miles an hour.

            The rooster's intended landing strip was an area of hard packed dirt, similar to the village yard in which he was raised, and was probably selected for it's familiar color and appearance.  Unfortunately, this was the bird's first high speed approach and landing, and his lack of experience quickly became a serious liability.  Instead of flaring out slowly, bleeding off speed and gliding in for a graceful landing, the rooster waited until the last moment, then quickly extended his wings, going immediately to full flaps.  Of course, chickens were never designed to perform such high stress maneuvers and the result was an immediate, catastrophic wing failure.  In other words, the rooster hit like a bug on a windshield.

            Amidst the carnage of Viet Nam, the premature death of a future meal seemed insignificant compared with the opportunity to collect valuable scientific data.  I mean, the question begged to be asked, would every domestically raised chicken with all the requisite flight equipment and no practical experience perform in like manner?  (There's no polite way to say that a bunch of 19 year-old boy-soldiers wanted to see another chicken explode.)  So, in the spirit of scientific exploration, an additional chicken was purchased from the emperiled family, the experiment was repeated, and the question answered.  Yes, a typical domestic Vietnamese chicken dropped from 5000 feet will land like a piano.

            When John finished the story, he pulled the ice pack away from the rookie's face and asked, "Do you get it?"

            "Yes, sir.  I have all the equipment and none of the experience."

            "Exactly.”

There was some discussion about bad tactics and mistakes made, but the lesson was clear—learn from your mistakes and don’t end up like the hundred mile an hour chicken