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THE BROWNS BOARD

The Genesis


D Bone

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If you don't like true stories, you clicked on the wrong thread. It simply points to the genesis of today. 

Back in 2006 I was a Little League softball president on a 22 person board of directors in a small rural SoCal town of 18,000 people.

My daughter was 11 at the time and had played for 3 years in the league but at that point she no longer played there as we were strictly a travel ball family.  Out of the 22 people that made up the board, I was the only one who did not have a child playing in the league....  I made every decision based on what I thought was best for the girls, and I often ruffled a few baseball people's feathers, but I digress.

One night a block of 5 female board members (all about my age) put a motion on the table that we would hand out 5th place trophies to all teams that finished fifth in a 5 team division.....  and not only that, but they wanted all of the trophies (1st through 5th) to all be the same size.

I sat there in utter disbelief for 45 minutes listening to the claimed benefits of their motion.  I will spare you the details and jump to the end by saying the motion was defeated, although it took multiple board meetings over the course of several weeks as they simply refused to let it go. (sound familiar?

I was so angry at what these women wanted to do to our young athletes. I was also angry and sad for their children as well and I thought to myself "What in the hell are you teaching your kids?" As the weeks turned into months and years, it became just another memory to me,  although I often told the story to anybody who would listen when I was at a softball field. 

Now as I sit here typing this, those then 6 year olds are now 20 and the 12 year olds are now 26....  Gee who could have seen this coming and what could have possibly gone wrong?

What I did not know back then was I was seeing the genesis of entitlement, and if this happened in your average small town, then it happened everywhere. 

Our story ends with me telling you that 4 of the 5 women were then - and still are now, public school teachers. Three of them in elementary and one in junior high.........

...... The same 5 women went on to put up another motion halfway through that year, which was when a team got up by more than 10 runs, the outfield scoreboard would be turned off.....and that motion fucking passed! That was my last year as a BoD in RLL, although I still get called to come help with softball tryouts even though I now live 35 miles away.... and yes, I still go out and run tryouts.  . 

And what happened to the women's kids? While I don't pretend to know how they all turned out (for some reason we're not friends on Facebook), I will tell you that one of the women's daughter is now 25ish and works in Hollywood as a stripper, er performer and I follow her on the Twatter.....

Thanks mom, you did a bang up job and turned me into a creepy weirdo. 

 

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sad state of affairs - entitlement - makes the lefties emotions swing nicely to happiness.

maybe that is what is wrong - Hoorta and woodpecker weren't allowed to play in the girl's leagues, and they are

permanently po'd.

lol

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Pretty sad Cal is already in here dropping names and insulting users on this board...   what about growing up in the 50's led him to that behavior? Was it a post-war prosperity, growing up with everything easily attainable (white and male certainly don't hurt) leading to a sense of... wait... let me check... yep it's entitlement 

shocker

 

 

Anyway, you would think, by the way some in the older generation talk, that these participation trophies are a rampant thing. I don't remember them. I wanted to win. I still. I'm very competitive. Losing hurts more than winning feels good. Etc. 

Maybe I just missed them?

I would push for the same thing you did D. There are winners and losers in competitions. Learning how to deal with losing is part of growing up. Learning how to deal with hate, in general, is part of growing up (and I don't think you're getting that from mom in a homeschool...)

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1 hour ago, MLD Woody said:

Anyway, you would think, by the way some in the older generation talk, that these participation trophies are a rampant thing. I don't remember them. I wanted to win. I still. I'm very competitive. Losing hurts more than winning feels good. Etc. 

Maybe I just missed them?

I would push for the same thing you did D. There are winners and losers in competitions. Learning how to deal with losing is part of growing up. Learning how to deal with hate, in general, is part of growing up (and I don't think you're getting that from mom in a homeschool...)

I am so competitive it's ridiculous. My older brother is 7yrs older than me and he was good at everything, so I guess that's where it's rooted from, always trying to keep up with him and his friends but never really being able to until I was 15ish...... what do they say about paybacks? 

Kids.... damn kids are so mean. They (we) were mean when I was little, and they still are today. I firmly believe a lot of who I am today is because of the dozen or so things that were done and/or said to me when I was a kid and were so traumatizing that I still remember the way they made me feel 40 plus years later.

Most of us are forged by our youth, but I do recognize that some are broken.  

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it's called "self-actualization" from what I remember. Kids' characters are forged, ...or not forged, when they

experience life - there is no sense of accomplishment and pride when kids don't earn a reward, are handed meaningless

"attaboys" across the board.

    Adversity here and there, losing a competition, making mistakes, finding out what THEY enjoy doing, trying different things - steels self-confidence and strength to not quit. One of the really good lessons, is to not quit. A kid starts hockey, finds out it isn't fun? "you started it, you have to finish it" is a valuable lesson. There is no accomplishment in quitting.

   Me, I always enjoyed earning my allowance. I never got to play any sports - I had Osgood-Schlatter's sp? disease in my knee. And that was in grade school. After riding in our car on vacation, going to the mountains, my knee would try to kill me. The pain was terrible. But I just figured my cousins had the same pain, so, I just never said anything and kept hiking up into the mountains.

I found out what it was, and sports was never going to happen.

   Ah, but I had already fallen in love with the outdoors, so I went hunting and fishing/camping/hiking - those were my sports. If you aren't quiet and still enough, you don't get a squirrel for supper. Lesson learned. lol.

   My knee was so bad, the patellar ligament (below the knee cap) started pulling away from the tibia. So, after the time my kneecap went out, ninth grade, they had trouble getting it back in at the hospital. The pain was ... way worse than words could ever say.

The head of the orthopedic board - reconstructed my knee, no simple feat. It took a few years to heal and wear a new path for the kneecap.

    I fished and hunted with my Dad - those days I treasure. I would never have had it any other way. Except I studied every move Leroy Kelly ever made, I wanted so much to play football as a running back. nope.

   Like I've said before, I was draft exempt - my knee kept me out of the army in 1970/71, in 73 I enlisted, had to talk my way in to the AF after they were going to send me home after looking at xrays of my knee. Stupid big screw that held it together....

   after my knee swelled up in basic, I just kept going. There is no "quit" in me, just like I kept hiking the mountains with my knee trying to ruin me.

but I digress.

   Some kids have no adversity, things handed to them just because... they don't develop character. They don't try new things, are afraid to make mistakes, ... simply being is a "you win" trophy.

    I knew a kid like that, in basic training. Me? adversity and trials are fun - I'll fight through them forever. I used to get into trouble in basic for grinning when our one TI would make jokes. It got so I was like Gomer Pyle grinning back at Sgt Carter. I got good at pushups. Our one TI thought that was great sport. dammit.

Damn, he was funny later on in basic, and knew he could get me eventually.

But the next row over, there was this kid who couldn't take it. He went around borrowing aspirin, cold pills, even Brasso from the cleaning materials closet ... whatever from other guys, secretly, and took them all at one time, tried to kill himself.

   One of the guys found out, saw what he was doing...and made an emergency call to the TI, but at the time, all I knew, was hushed frantic emergency crew coming in fast to get him out of there.... I woke up, sat up, and somebody got me by the tshirt and said to get my ass back to sleep NOW.

   so I did. That kid was gone, never to come back. too bad. I guess that kid always had everything handed to him...was always protected...never faced adversity... was one of those who was never allowed to make a mistake, and was always winning participation...maybe.

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