Yesterday Richard and I, on our drive around Wellington touched on our school and university days and our successes, or lack of them with picking up women when we were in late teens and early twenties. We discussed how young people today have much better opportunities with bars and social spots open way later than in our day and that social networking sites including the odious and dangerous Tinder make it almost impossible to miss out.
We looked at each other and decided that if we had the chance to do it again, even if we had all that advantage, we'd still fuck it up and do the same things again.
You go back, Jack, do it again, wheels turnin' 'round and 'roundYou go back, Jack, do it again
No matter though as we have both forged strong relationships with great women even if this takes him by surprise as in his comment on my previous post:
"Hey, today was good fun. I enjoyed your girlfriend stories but still can't understand how you managed to get a long term woman like Lynn. Was it my teaching?"
No, it wasn't his teaching - I put it down to luck and inevitability but we both deserve it.
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Getting back to 'Glory Days' I think young people today have huge advantages that I hope they use to good effect. At school I had a natural ability at most sports but never properly took advantage of it.
I was good at: ball sports - rugby league, soccer, rugby, tennis, cricket and softball; athletics - sprints and hurdles; and had a good throwing arm. In the school year I, and many others would just rock up to the sports days or the start of the sports seasons without having done any practise or training during the Christmas holidays - no-one ever suggested this to us. We ran in bare feet or 'sand shoes' and had no special gear. I never took the opportunity to throw a shot put, a discus or a javelin although I know now, that I would have been good at it. I, like Richard did pretty well at sports getting into the track and field team and eventually, after abandoning soccer, a winning rugby team in the 7th form. Because I had an after -school job and couldn't attend Tuesday and Thursday practices, I couldn't join the cricket team but I was asked to play in a couple of second-eleven matches.
If I did go back to those days, not necessarily armed with flash sports gear and advanced training methods but just an awareness that a bit of fitness training over the school holidays is a good idea, I might have ben able to excel at sports rather than just being good at them.
Then again, I'm really a lazy bastard and probably still wouldn't do any preparation and would just do it again- the same old thing.
4 comments:
I hope you're not counting that soccer team among your triumphs. Most of those kids had a missing leg, or polio, or blindness or chronic asthma. You needed a medical certificate to play soccer at a catholic school in those days.
True, and the ones who didn't make the soccer muster ended up in the school band.
Sounds like it was a hard day at the cleaning face.
And Catholics profess to love all mankind - unless they are gay (sarcasm).
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