America isn’t going to slide to mediocrity. Nope, it’s going to be pushed down the hill by a group of whiny Gladys Kravitz types.
They’re going after our children.
Take the case of Michael Anderson and the girls’ basketball team he coaches in Arroyo, California. Coach Anderson recently led his team to a 161-2 victory over Bloomington High School.
That’s not a typo.
161-2.
This was even with putting in the benchwarmers.
Once upon a time, Coach Anderson and his team would be heroes.
This week, Coach Anderson got a two-game suspension. Bloomington’s coach whined about the lack of ethics in the loss.
Yeah. Lack of ethics.
Again, not a typo.
Winning in a huge fashion is not ethical.
This hits a bit close to home. My brother-in-law coached his son’s Pop Warner football team. And they won. No matter what he did, they won.
His reward?
A threatened suspension.
Some people just laugh and scoff at the stupidity. After all, these are just kids’ games, right?
Wrong.
At the same time youth and teen sports leagues are engaging in their Jihad on winning really big victories, parents are being investigated for a horrid form of neglect: letting their kids walk to the park.
Indeed, the parents, Danielle and Alexander Meitiv, practice what is called “free range parenting.” It has a name, air quotes and even its own TV show, World’s Worst Parent. The title comes from the name its host, Lenore Skenazy, got called when people learned that she allowed her 9 year old to ride the subway alone.
You know a cultural movement has hit its stride when it gets a reality TV show.
But what the hell has happened to society when a kid walking around is a thing and not just a kid walking around?
So we now live in a nexus of people who want to raise children never to risk any psychic or physical danger. They are bubble-wrapped, physically and mentally.
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This is going to turn out great.
We don’t want kids to play sports and run around outside just to give adults some breathing space by getting them out of the house. It’s not even just about getting them to move and do something that doesn’t involve the word “box” or station.”
Don’t get me wrong. “Me time” and ending the epidemic of school-yard butter balls is important. Someday I’m going to retire and I want the next generation of workers to be fit and productive so I can lay around at the beach.
Here’s the thing, though. The bright-eyed, bushy-tailed workers that we will simply soak to fund Social Security and Medicare require the guts and motive to succeed. Since we’re going to be yoking these kids with the burden of having two workers supporting every one retired layabout like myself, these beasts of burden can’t just be mediocre.
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America’s dying social program will need field-tearing, smoke-snorting studs under the yoke. Any lesser beasts will get stuck in the field or be too scared to even go on it without adult supervision and fifteen forms signed in triplicate.
Are we going to get these studs by teaching them to win but not by much? Or perhaps the hard chargers of the future will have Mommy and Daddy hanging around in their cubicles.
Heck no. But parents everywhere will be protected from empty-nest syndrome because their pampered little princes and princesses will still be hanging out in the basement smoking weed and playing vids.
Our kids deserve to dream big and live big. And we want them to have the gumption to get onto the playing field on their own.
The Society for a Perfect World types also overlook the fact that losing a game and having adventures are actually an important part of life. The time to get knocked in the dirt or get into a little trouble is when you’re a kid. The stakes aren’t important but the lessons carry through life.
A real childhood tempers the soul, like fire does steel. Good steel is hard but not brittle. A child who does things for himself, tries new things, will not be brittle. Better that they get used to the fact that the world is a harsh and unforgiving place when the stakes are low.
Think of the classic American story: The Bad News Bears. They start out as a motley group of misfits, losers in every sense of the word. But in their humiliation, they strive and rise to greatness.
Would the Bears have pulled themselves together if they hadn’t been allowed to be losers? What if they hadn’t even been allowed to walk to the park?
More importantly, what if Bill Gates hadn’t decided to take the risk of leaving school and starting Microsoft? Or if Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t done the same?
Imagine, a world where the Winklevoss twins developed Facebook!
The point is our economy needs people willing to walk the tight rope without a net. And our society needs to recognize that those brave souls will, as a result of their courage, reap massively outsize rewards
And, if that’s not enough, it’s for the children.
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