Monkey see, monkey do

It’s not new that kids try to emulate the actions of grown-ups. When I was a kid, I tried to emulate the batting stances of Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and all the baseball greats, but withouy similar success at the plate.

But a driver who competes regularly at Hoosier Park in Indiana told me about an astonishing scene he witnessed recently. In Indiana, drivers are prohibited from using a home run swing to whip horses; rules restrict them to using their wrists to flick the whip at the horse they’re driving.

This driver told me that he saw kids running along outside the paddock fence at Hoosier Park, pretending to be driving horses. Kids do such thing. They were running and holding imaginary lines in each hand. He said that when they wanted to whip their imaginary horses, the kids all used the wrist action that they see on the track at Hoosier Park.

“That told me just how much impact this Indiana whipping rule is having,” the driver said.

This driver is middle-aged and he told me he grew up slashing a bale of straw with a whip, as many kids did. He thought that was how you whipped a horse because he’d seen drivers in the old days doing just that. Monkey see, monkey do. Now kids are seeing a much different example.

“I don’t beat on horses the way I used to,” this driver admitted to me. “If they’re not going to go, they’re not going to go.”

But he was astonished when he saw what impact the Indiana whipping rule has had on the next generation of harness drivers.