The Worst Is Still Good
Apr. 20th, 2014 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebLast weekend we went out of town to help one of Robin's friends celebrate his 50th birthday. One of the activities was a cross between whiffle ball and bumper cars. You steer with one hand while holding a spatula-like scoop with the other hand, and there are eight of you against eight of them with the goal of flinging a plastic ball at something resembling a basketball backboard.
The first game I'm not sure I touched the ball at all, but I did get better at controlling my vehicle and enjoyed driving it all over the court like a maniac. I was also happy to find out that when I totally slammed into something or vice versa, it was fun and not painful. One day I will be too old or brittle for that, but not yet.
The second game I did actually get a hold of the ball several times and I completed two passes. Fun times!
There weren't enough cars for everyone, so I sat out every other game, and during one of these times I noticed that people tended to err in the direction of the ball going over the target board rather than under.
The third time I got an opportunity to make a shot myself and indeed I did not make that common mistake--instead it went under the board. Dang.
I often got into the action and sometimes roamed around the other end hoping the ball would come flying my way (like I always used to do in soccer class so my shins wouldn't get kicked all the time).
I'm pretty sure I was one of the worst people there, but I still had fun.
Then we played laser tag. I'd never done this and I never did figure out all the rules. For the first third of the game, I enjoyed hiding and getting people as they ran through. At first I noticed I got shot in the back twice (from invisible people above), so I had to move. Then sometimes people would surprise me and sometimes I would surprise them. But then a huge crowd of the other team came through and it was no fun anymore so I moved to another area.
I ended up joining a large gang of my own team with one guy calling out locations of enemies such as "on the bridge!" This was kind of fun but I was definitely doing less. Then we dispersed again and for the last third of the game I was mostly running around and occasionally getting shot.
When the game ended, they announced the total score of the two teams, something like 19,000 for my team to 20,000; not embarrassing. When we got out, we got score cards. I was ranked 19 out of 19 (or was it 21 out of 21?). No worries, it was fun making a victory cheer about how I won last place. Then I noticed that my score was 350, and the next lowest score was well over 1000. So basically, I single-handedly lost the game for my team. Oops! That was a little embarrassing. But as with the last game, no one was serious, it was all just good fun.
Friday night we had a surprise visitor at craft night from someone who had moved several states away. She had just learned to make trees of life which are wire pendants consisting of a thick wire circle enclosing a gnarly tree shape made of thinner wire. She got lots of practice and got to where she could make one in only 20 minutes.
She brought a huge pile of them, each in a little linen bag she had stamped, and gave them to us. Then she told us we could trade the one we got if we liked another one better. I got one with "leaves" made of snowflake obsidian (a white and black stone, as you might have guessed). I didn't actually like any of the other ones better, so yea!
Then the real gift is she taught us how to make some ourselves. She had forgotten the stones to use for the leaves (they were packed, but not in the same place as all the other supplies), but she did have stones to use for full moons. Fun times.
Mine turned out to be the worst one. Sparce, boring, and the outer circle was no longer circular. (I really should re-learn a way to get pictures in this blog, but oh well. If I hold off on writing until I do that, it never works out.) But I had fun. And it still actually worked, even though I cut my tree wires too short.
And another friend took some notes and let me have them, then I added some more and let her have them. So it's quite possible that I will give myself more chances in the future if I think of just the right stones and wire colors. I'm so glad I decided not to sit out but instead to hog some of the teaching attention for myself.
(Plus I still got to finish the scarf I had brought for my craft project. I didn't finish it in time for local winter, but as I told R, "I'll probably finish this in time for August," the time when you least want a scarf. And indeed I did.)
In conclusion, being the worst at something doesn't necessarily mean you suck, and even if you do, that doesn't necessarily matter. I think a lot of times grown-ups don't want to do things that are new and that they are uncomfortable with and which they are sure will make them look like idiots. But that's sad.
Article of the Day - Huffington Post's 7 Reasons Dressing Your Age Is Overrated with pictures of a parent and grown child swapping clothes (or wearing different sizes of the same clothes so they fit). Of course the young folks all look good in the older folks' clothes, but the opposite is mostly true, too.
The lesson is supposed to be to wear whatever you like or at least that there may be a lot more things that are flattering for you than you realize.
But mostly it's fun to look at the pictures. The people also try to copy the stance of the other person in the "before" picture, which is quite fun.
It wasn't quite as fun to imagine switching clothes with my mom, mostly because I don't know what poses we would strike and then try to copy from each other.
The first game I'm not sure I touched the ball at all, but I did get better at controlling my vehicle and enjoyed driving it all over the court like a maniac. I was also happy to find out that when I totally slammed into something or vice versa, it was fun and not painful. One day I will be too old or brittle for that, but not yet.
The second game I did actually get a hold of the ball several times and I completed two passes. Fun times!
There weren't enough cars for everyone, so I sat out every other game, and during one of these times I noticed that people tended to err in the direction of the ball going over the target board rather than under.
The third time I got an opportunity to make a shot myself and indeed I did not make that common mistake--instead it went under the board. Dang.
I often got into the action and sometimes roamed around the other end hoping the ball would come flying my way (like I always used to do in soccer class so my shins wouldn't get kicked all the time).
I'm pretty sure I was one of the worst people there, but I still had fun.
Then we played laser tag. I'd never done this and I never did figure out all the rules. For the first third of the game, I enjoyed hiding and getting people as they ran through. At first I noticed I got shot in the back twice (from invisible people above), so I had to move. Then sometimes people would surprise me and sometimes I would surprise them. But then a huge crowd of the other team came through and it was no fun anymore so I moved to another area.
I ended up joining a large gang of my own team with one guy calling out locations of enemies such as "on the bridge!" This was kind of fun but I was definitely doing less. Then we dispersed again and for the last third of the game I was mostly running around and occasionally getting shot.
When the game ended, they announced the total score of the two teams, something like 19,000 for my team to 20,000; not embarrassing. When we got out, we got score cards. I was ranked 19 out of 19 (or was it 21 out of 21?). No worries, it was fun making a victory cheer about how I won last place. Then I noticed that my score was 350, and the next lowest score was well over 1000. So basically, I single-handedly lost the game for my team. Oops! That was a little embarrassing. But as with the last game, no one was serious, it was all just good fun.
Friday night we had a surprise visitor at craft night from someone who had moved several states away. She had just learned to make trees of life which are wire pendants consisting of a thick wire circle enclosing a gnarly tree shape made of thinner wire. She got lots of practice and got to where she could make one in only 20 minutes.
She brought a huge pile of them, each in a little linen bag she had stamped, and gave them to us. Then she told us we could trade the one we got if we liked another one better. I got one with "leaves" made of snowflake obsidian (a white and black stone, as you might have guessed). I didn't actually like any of the other ones better, so yea!
Then the real gift is she taught us how to make some ourselves. She had forgotten the stones to use for the leaves (they were packed, but not in the same place as all the other supplies), but she did have stones to use for full moons. Fun times.
Mine turned out to be the worst one. Sparce, boring, and the outer circle was no longer circular. (I really should re-learn a way to get pictures in this blog, but oh well. If I hold off on writing until I do that, it never works out.) But I had fun. And it still actually worked, even though I cut my tree wires too short.
And another friend took some notes and let me have them, then I added some more and let her have them. So it's quite possible that I will give myself more chances in the future if I think of just the right stones and wire colors. I'm so glad I decided not to sit out but instead to hog some of the teaching attention for myself.
(Plus I still got to finish the scarf I had brought for my craft project. I didn't finish it in time for local winter, but as I told R, "I'll probably finish this in time for August," the time when you least want a scarf. And indeed I did.)
In conclusion, being the worst at something doesn't necessarily mean you suck, and even if you do, that doesn't necessarily matter. I think a lot of times grown-ups don't want to do things that are new and that they are uncomfortable with and which they are sure will make them look like idiots. But that's sad.
Article of the Day - Huffington Post's 7 Reasons Dressing Your Age Is Overrated with pictures of a parent and grown child swapping clothes (or wearing different sizes of the same clothes so they fit). Of course the young folks all look good in the older folks' clothes, but the opposite is mostly true, too.
The lesson is supposed to be to wear whatever you like or at least that there may be a lot more things that are flattering for you than you realize.
But mostly it's fun to look at the pictures. The people also try to copy the stance of the other person in the "before" picture, which is quite fun.
It wasn't quite as fun to imagine switching clothes with my mom, mostly because I don't know what poses we would strike and then try to copy from each other.