Keep Shooting, Keep Missing

Or, What If You Love Something But Are Really Bad At It?

My daughter plays for the Washington Generals. Know who they are? Hold the thought.

I’m continually proud and startled by how hard her basketball team tries and yet how they just keep getting walloped!

This last Saturday, they played against a team of giants. I swear they were high school kids. They even had their own uniforms with names on the back! They scored the first basket 4 seconds after tip off.

Little Bean had one good take away and then there was a time she was ganged up by three kids and ended up knocked down. All in good humor though. She doesn’t seem to mind getting trounced again and again.

“My butt hurt after that one, daddy,” she said later.

If losing (again and again) by large margins builds character then Little Bean’s character will be the size of the Empire State Building by the time this is all over and done.

Somebody mentioned they’re like the Bad News Bears, but I had to remind them that in that movie, the team actually gets better as the season progresses!

So, Washington Generals…

Since the 1950s, The Generals have been the Harlem Globetrotters exhibition touring team. They’ve existed to highlight Globetrotter skills and put on a good show basically. They’ve lost to the Globetrotter’s something like 16,000 times.

I’ve attempted to ease the blows each week with cookie-cutter platitudes about how hard she tried or you know, ‘at least you’re having fun.’ But after last week’s loss against the dinosaur team that appeared to be sponsored by who knows what Fortune 500 Company, there’s really no more hiding it. We just have to laugh about it.

“Daddy, those girls were, like, three feet taller than us!”

There is one small sliver of hope. You see, in order to be the team the Globetrotters always beat, and put on a good show as well, The Generals through the years have actually been a good basketball team of skilled players.

And, are you ready for this? They’ve actually won THREE games. Three games out of 16,000. So what I’m saying is, there’s hope! Go Roadrunners!