In one of the books I'll never write about the Emergent Americans is a small chapter on the tell-tale existentials. One of the examples has to do with the man who plays tennis at the club but still dreams about being an NFL quarterback. One day he takes his kid to a picnic, throws him the long bomb and realizes his kid is running in the wrong directions and can't tell a post pattern from a buttonhook. Ugh. Embarrassing.
I had that moment this weekend and it reminded me of Cobb's Rule #14. When people are confused, they overuse their strengths. This derives from 'people don't have weaknesses, they overuse their strengths' which is a nice way of saying 'the idiot who only has a hammer sees every problem as a nail'. Same premise. Different language.
And so it came to me with a sudden ferocity that over the years I have only taken one of my kids out to the basketball courts. That's the one whose knee you can see on the left of the picture heading to the get the rebound she knows is inevitably coming when the old man stops dribbling outside of the three point line. My other two lovely children are standing around like the clueless newbs they are.
We had a good game of Horse nevertheless. Then the the volleyball kids started hitting a volleyball around and the cheerleader started doing handstands. My wife took more pictures. I started thinking about how and whether or not to write this essay.
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