Anne Emerson Hall on Fit To Teach

You crack me up! Now, in my life, PE teachers have despaired of my almost complete lack of coordination for anything more complex than well, walking. In my 20s, I took close to a year of tennis lessons—there was a federally funded program to promote tennis in the inner city of Durham, NC, something along the lines of $10 a month. It came to an end when the coach called me into his office and said, “You are driving me to drink. I have tried everything I can to explain this game to you. What did you do as a child?” When i replied that I read books and drew pictures, his reaction was as if I’d said I had traveled to outer space. And this weekend, at a workshop on eco-friendlier etching (printmaking—still making pictures at age 70), I recalled the very first time I traveled to an art workshop more than 20 years ago. Nervous and excited. My husband dropped me off at Hartsfield Jackson airport with this admonishment: “Go make lots of mistakes.” I was shocked and horrified at the prospect of doing so in the company of strangers, being taught by a very famous portrait painter, all the way up in East Fishkill, NY. “How else will you learn?” he said. I told my classmates this weekend that I thought I’d made every mistake there was in previous workshops on solar plate etching, a related technique. With pride! I learned new ways to screw up this weekend. With gratitude for the opportunity.