Page 2 of Aim for Love

“Let’s not force anyone who’s not ready.” I wave her off.

“No,” she says, surprising me. “I’m ready.” She’s shaking a little, but she steps forward.

Scott invites her to stand in position in front of the stall, behind the line that’s marked 12 feet away from the bullseye. He directs her to put one foot in front of the other and suggests she holds the axe with two hands instead of one.

The woman hefts the axe over her head with both hands, biting her lip. She reels back, throws, and the axe doesn’t even make it all the way to the bullseye. “Good try!” Scott says, reflexively, then starts correcting her posture.

The other two women near me are giggling as they watch. I can tell they’re talking about Scott’s good looks because they turn their backs toward me and whisper. More than once, Scott’s gotten in trouble with our boss for sleeping with clients. It’s too easy for him; he looks like the stereotypical jock and he’s good at teaching. His gentle touch invites women—and a few men—to imagine what he’d be like in a different context.

In contrast, I wear glasses and have to practice every lesson in advance so I don’t stumble over my words trying to explain things. I read more than I talk, so I once mispronounced the word “superfluous” in front of an entire tour group because I’d never used it out loud.

Leaving the women to their whispering, I gesture the family group over to an empty stall to start explaining the mechanics to them. The dad interrupts me several times as I do, but it’s fine. I read a book about the male need to assert dominance and how it’s an evolutionary imperative for some people, something they struggle to overcome. The book made the point that our human ability to conquer that instinct showed the higher evolution of nature. This man still has more in common with the monkeys, soI treat him that way, allowing him to get his show out of the way so things don’t become aggressive. I’m not interested in a fight today, or in impressing the man’s wife. We’re all following our evolutionary imperatives here and mine is to do my job well.

Eventually, I get the family throwing well enough that I can step away and survey how the rest of our tour group is doing.

The group of women are taking turns. The two whisperers are mostly hitting somewhere around the edge of the target. The curvy woman who went first is the worst throw I’ve ever seen. Every axe either doesn’t go far enough, doesn’t stick where it lands, or hits the wall. Scott keeps trying to give her small tips, suggesting she follow through on her throw or step into her front foot, and I see her listen and try to implement them. Still, she keeps flubbing her throws. I’ve never seen someone fail to hit the target so consistently.

I can see on her face that she’s not surprised. This is a woman used to fucking up. She keeps chatting with her friends and smiling, but I see her bite her lip every time she takes a turn.

She continues to take her turns. She’s not giving up.

Still, she’s definitely not enjoying this and I hate that. The whole point of these adventure tours, and the activities we meticulously plan for them, is to get people out of their comfort zone and trying something that surprises them—in good ways. Nobody has fun when an activity makes them feel incompetent, so my job and the job of every guide here is to ensure people achieve basic mastery.

Scott’s trying, but I can tell he’s getting frustrated with Mollie’s inability to improve. He meets my eyes briefly when he turns away from adjusting her stance yet again and gives a tiny shake of his head.Lost cause.

Giving up on a client means a bad review later, so I gesture to him, flicking my thumb back and forth between my group and his to ask if he wants to trade. Scott nods and doesn’t take longto tell the women “my buddy Hunter” is going to help them now. He claps me on the back when we trade places. I know what it means: “Good luck.”

It’s fine. A book I read once about stubborn students—it was meant for public high school teachers—taught me some of the environmental and cultural factors that can make people tough to teach and made me much more patient.

“How are we doing?” I ask the three women, introducing myself to them.

Like the rest of the group, they’re out-of-towners; I suspect from a city. They likely came here for a quaint mountain retreat and signed up for the adventure tour to have something to talk about when they went back home.

The one who’s struggling the most, Mollie, stands behind her two friends. One of them is tall and blonde and skinny; the other is tall and brunette with an undercut on the left side of her head, a design of triple X’s over an ear full of hoops and studs. Mollie is petite and I bet she feels like the odd one out more often than she admits.

“We’re not very good at this,” says one woman.

“It’s our first time, though,” adds the other. “We’re axe-throwing virgins.”

They snicker together. From the smell of their breath and the empty cups on the table nearby, I’d say they’re aware this place serves booze.

“Not any more, you’re not,” I tell them. They giggle more.

“I’m the worst at it,” says Mollie. “I can’t seem to make my body do what the other guide—Scott?—showed me.”

“You’re just making us look better,” one of her friends says to her. “Somebody has to do it.” That makes Mollie’s role in this trio pretty clear.

Mollie shrugs and smiles, not quite meeting my eyes.

“Want to try again?” I ask. “Or are you ready to call it quits?”

She grimaces, and I realize I shouldn’t have given her option two. “Why don’t you watch me a few times?”

I show them my most basic throw, using two hands and going slow. I do that a few times, pointing out my stance, how my weight moves as I throw, and my follow-through.

“You make it look so easy,” Mollie says.

“It’s only easy once you have the muscle memory,” I assure. “Until then, it’s always really hard to do something new.”

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