Learning how to be competitive.

As a kid, I was never competitive in the sense that I wanted to work hard to be the best at something. I just want to be good at it, and if I wasn’t, yeah, there were other things to be good at. Turns out you don’t become very good at anything that way.

When I was in grammar school, I remember playing kickball every day at recess. And I remember really loving it. And I remember very often a girl named Jennifer would try to catch the ball that I had kicked, and her glasses would break because she wasn’t a very good catcher. Namely because you’re not supposed to catch the ball with your face. But I never caught the ball with my face, so I considered myself good at kickball.

I also remember playing baseball at this same age. There are pictures of me and my mullet in my VFW uniform. Wearing my big trucker hat, 10 sizes too big for me, with the sweet netting in the back.

I’m not sure if I was any good at baseball, there was only one game that I remember. It was a particular game that I was pitching. My parents had brought my godparents, who I adored. I remember being very nervous to do a good job! I remember concentrating on my wind-up. I remember being so excited! The pitcher! Everyone was watching ME!

Well apparently everyone was watching me for a very very long time because at one point my godfather, in between innings, came over to tell me that there was a time limit between pitches. I can just picture the people on the bleacher…wondering why the heck I wasn’t throwing the ball. What was I doing out there? Just throw the ball girl!

Was I really concentrating? Was I frozen with fear? Perhaps I was just thinking about other things. Who knows, but when I realized what I was doing, I was pretty humiliated. For this 7-year old girl, that wasn’t hard to do. I don’t even remember if I sped it up after that. That moment is just frozen in my mind. Trying to make my family proud and instead making them embarrassed. I’m pretty sure that was the end of my baseball career.

It’s funny the things that you remember when you’re trying to relate to a 7 year old of your own. Jackson was very excited this week because he caught his very first kickball in the outfield at recess.  I’m assuming it was with his hands.

And now he’s playing baseball. Sort of. He’s the youngest one on the team. He’s not challenged by the fact that everyone is better than him. He drifts off a lot and doesn’t pay attention. He’s caught thinking of other things. I’m trying to teach him to listen to his coaches and keep practicing….but I know what’s coming. The end of baseball.

And I wonder why we can’t just hand down the good parts of ourselves to our kids. I think having kids is a special opportunity we’re given to overcome ourselves. I know from my own mistakes, hopefully, what to tell my kids about life. Or do I?  I’m not sure yet. I’m going to save that for another blog entry.

But I’ll say that it’s really easy to keep making the same character flaw mistakes. But to see the little person that you love almost more than yourself, make your mistakes…you recognized it very quickly.