Primo: Look at the email my mom and dad sent. They wonder why their
grandchildren do not want to spend time with them.
We’ve tried to encourage
Michael's love of basketball by steering him through two basketball camps and
giving him advice on what he needed to work on to make the school basketball
team. But he chose not to bulk up, tone himself, or increase his stamina.
Obviously without the necessary hard work he wasn’t picked after team tryouts.
For whatever reasons, he seems bound to diminish his innate talents by making
unwise life-choices. He is counting on scholarships but has done little or
no research about colleges that would be appropriate and/or affordable.
Did the post get cut off? The last sentence trails off w/o punctuation, and there's nothing about Maria, who I'm sure also made terrible, terrible decisions on par with not pursuing a ridiculously low chance of becoming a professional athlete. (not a reflection on Michael but on the odds...these days, the competition is incredibly stiff. If you are not already tops in your sport by 10 or so, you almost certainly won't be competitive at 20 either.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, wow. Did they even hear themselves??
Ooops! Thanks! I restored the period.
DeleteYeah - that Michael. Not working harder to pursue a life as a professional basketball player. Honestly.
(Related: Primo and I saw the play, "McGuire," about the former apparently very successful basketball coach at Marquette. His philosophy is that he would recruit only players who had cracked sidewalks in front of their homes- no kids from nice suburban houses with yards.)
I have a cracked sidewalk in front of my nice suburban house with a yard! It's because of tree roots.
ReplyDelete(but yes, I get the point!)
Kathryn, I thought about this some more last night when Primo and I were at our tennis class. (The snow has melted! We can play!)
DeleteSly and Doris never put Primo in a single athletic activity. He was never on a Little League team or a soccer team. He never had any kind of sports lesson. They did not want him associating with the other children in the neighborhood. (Although Sly was a big union man, he had nothing but disdain for the actual members of the non-professional unions, like the coal miners in the town where they lived.)
So yeah - they were upset that Michael wouldn't play ball but it wasn't good enough for Primo? What is up with that?
(The really sad thing is that Primo has all this natural talent. So unfair! He had never played tennis before we started the summer recreation classes a few years ago and now, he could be pretty good if he played someone better than me.)
People can be so weirdly inconsistent. I guess all you can do is laugh (which is what I do when my mom says something on Monday and something different on Tuesday. I could give a million examples. I occasionally try to point it out to her, and she always denies having said whatever she said on Monday).
Delete