Was Bugs Bunny the greatest teacher of all time?

As a child I was not a good student. Not in the traditional sense. School often bored me. The subjects we studied didn’t connect in my head.

On the other hand, what was happening out the window was of great interest.

It didn’t really matter what was moving out there — pedestrians, passing cars, somebody on a bicycle, or two squirrels zipping around the trunk of a tree in the yard. These things all interested me far more than lessons being sketched out in dusty white chalk on the blackboard at the front of the room.

I was prone to daydreaming. Thank goodness.

As I look back on my younger years, I realize some of the best lessons I ever learned came through the cathode ray tube that gave life to my family’s prized Zenith television set. Specifically, in the form of Warner Brothers Cartoons.

Just the thought of a Bugs Bunny short brings to mind the zippy Hawaiian guitar opening salvo that meant just one thing: Entertainment was about to be launched into my living room, backed by the power of imagination.

For those who think this is mere hyperbole, let me assure you it is not. There were lessons buried in those cartoons that I credit with keeping me alive all these years. Literally.

The lessons translated to my time in the cockpit years later, but they also provided some much appreciated guidance for life outside the airplane as well.

Fixation is bad. Whether we fall prey to it on an IFR flight due to fatigue, or in financial planning thanks to a particularly engaging analyst’s predictions, or we focus too intently on the chicken in the oven to the exclusion of the rice on the stovetop. Fixation is not our friend — but it is a constant temptation and an appealing rabbit hole we are all prone to falling down.

Speaking of rabbit holes, I’ll gladly point to Bugs Bunny as one of my major influences. Bugs famously and frequently said, “I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque.” That memorable sentence was the first piece of usable navigational advice I ever got.

Know where you are. Know where you’re going. Double check your progress along the way.

My first long motorcycle trips involved a Rand MacNally map of American roads folded into my duffle. The book version, not the awkwardly folded editions that focused on single cities or states. All thanks to Bugs.

Maybe you didn’t get that same insight from religiously watching Bugs and his friends careen through life at top speed. But I did. Seriously. I still reflect on those lessons today. They both entertain and enlighten me. As they can do for anyone who cares to pay attention and look beyond the superficial meaning of each short.

And as long as we’re talking about looking where we’re going, let’s not forget the insightfully original Wile E. Coyote. In his single-minded haste to capture and eat the Roadrunner, Wile E. routinely provided grist for my intellectual mill to work with.

Flight was his solution in one episode. Wile E., who routinely made use of his account with the ACME Company (a precursor to Amazon.com) was delivered a lime green winged suit that would provide him with the speed and aerial dexterity to capture his prey. Unfortunately, while blissed out in flight, Wile E. closed his eyes to enjoy the sensation — and quickly splattered himself into a solid rock wall.

Collision avoidance was on my mind from a young age. A lesson that was heavily reinforced by a four-door sedan that flattened me on the street in front of our house one fine summer day.

This was in the mid 1960s. A stranger knocked on our front door that morning. My mom answered. As the story goes, he asked, “Do you have a son about this tall? Blonde.”

“Yes, I do,” my mom replied.

Pointing to my unconscious body in the street he said, “Is that him?”

True story. Had I taken the teachings of Wile E. Coyote more seriously I could have avoided my first concussion, a considerable number of stitches, and a reputation for being surprisingly aerodynamic when launched from the grill of a full-sized American car.

Lesson learned. The animated short subject department at Warner Brothers Studios became my greatest teachers.

Who can forget the time Yosemite Sam had my hero Bugs all trussed up on a high dive, ready to meet his end. Yosemite sawed through that diving board with the determination of a mad man, which he most certainly was. But, when Yosemite’s saw bit through that last strand of pine, the entire structure he was standing atop of collapsed out of sight. Bugs was left standing on the remains of the diving board, suspended in mid-air without any support at all.

Expect the unexpected.

Bugs saw his situation through a humorous lens, of course. He simply said, “I know this defies the law of gravity, but ya’ see, I never studied law.”

It’s been rumored that Sir Issac Newton had the epiphany that resulted in our first understanding of gravity because an apple fell on his head. That’s probably not true, but he undoubtedly wrestled with a series of thought experiments based on his observations that led to Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, work that Albert Einstein expanded on a century later.

I am certainly not in the same class with Newton or Einstein. But the idea of taking my observations, playing with them in my head, evaluating the logic and reason of each new circumstance, has served me well.

Galileo dropped objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa in his experiments with gravity and falling bodies. Dave Scott proved Galileo right by dropping a hammer and a feather simultaneously as he stood on the surface of the moon.

We all learn and prove or disprove our beliefs in different ways. No one method is superior to another. Learning is learning, even if you learn from an odd collection of cartoon characters.

May you be fortunate enough to find the insight you seek and apply it in a way that enhances your safety and enjoyment of life.