It's not that I hate crowds; I hate rudeness and stupidity, which just
happen to be rampant in crowds.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
I think I'm officially an old man
Today I noticed something which must be due to socioeconomic differences between the public schools in a midsize southern city (where I went to school) and a private elementary school in one of the most expensive large cities in America (down the street from where I live).
As I was walking home from lunch, recess was in session for a few classes, maybe an entire grade. A group of mostly boys stood in an area roughly the size of half a tennis court, standing close enough to one another that at first glance you might have thought hacky sack was making a comeback. But no, they had a soccer ball, and it looked like they had formed teams, and it looked like they had goals marked with cones, and they were dribbling and passing, so you might have wanted to say that they were playing soccer.
But the five yard long "field" was so crowded with children that when one kid was passed the ball, his defender was already so much in his face that he could only pass it along to the next player, who was standing right beside him, and because nobody ever ran anywhere, or even walked a short distance downfield, it ended up looking more like a giant living game of foosball.
Meanwhile, ten feet away was a basketball court, "full court" only in the sense that there were two nets on opposing sides of the court, where a boy and a girl alternated taking freethrow shots.
Never when I was in at recess did my classmates choose soccer over basketball, let alone in such great numbers. Gym class for me was all basketball, all the time. Once a year or so when the time for soccer came around, sure we all played. But we also played pickleball, badminton, and shuffleboard when the time for those came around. Basketball was what you DID when nobody was forcing you to play something else. Even if you weren't any good, like me. And if it was so crowded around the backboard that nobody could move, well, there were like five other backboards in the gym that you could use.
Kids nowadays, huh?
As I was walking home from lunch, recess was in session for a few classes, maybe an entire grade. A group of mostly boys stood in an area roughly the size of half a tennis court, standing close enough to one another that at first glance you might have thought hacky sack was making a comeback. But no, they had a soccer ball, and it looked like they had formed teams, and it looked like they had goals marked with cones, and they were dribbling and passing, so you might have wanted to say that they were playing soccer.
But the five yard long "field" was so crowded with children that when one kid was passed the ball, his defender was already so much in his face that he could only pass it along to the next player, who was standing right beside him, and because nobody ever ran anywhere, or even walked a short distance downfield, it ended up looking more like a giant living game of foosball.
Meanwhile, ten feet away was a basketball court, "full court" only in the sense that there were two nets on opposing sides of the court, where a boy and a girl alternated taking freethrow shots.
Never when I was in at recess did my classmates choose soccer over basketball, let alone in such great numbers. Gym class for me was all basketball, all the time. Once a year or so when the time for soccer came around, sure we all played. But we also played pickleball, badminton, and shuffleboard when the time for those came around. Basketball was what you DID when nobody was forcing you to play something else. Even if you weren't any good, like me. And if it was so crowded around the backboard that nobody could move, well, there were like five other backboards in the gym that you could use.
Kids nowadays, huh?
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