My oldest son, Bo, was not all that well coordinated. So when he got to the fourth grade and tried out for Knightdale’s Mighty Mite football team, his first few practices didn’t go well. One evening he came home crying.
“I couldn’t catch the ball,” he told me. “The other boys could catch it, but I couldn’t catch it.”
I was not surprised. He couldn’t catch a baseball very well either. Or hit one. But he was smart, and strong, and he always tried hard.
I told him, “Bo, you don’t have to catch the ball. All you have to do is grab those other boys after they catch it and throw ’em on the ground.”
He stopped crying right then and a HUGE smile spread across his face. Throw them on the ground? He could do that.
Bo played nine years of football. On defense he was a linebacker where he specialized in throwing boys on the ground. On offense he was a guard and he got to where he was pretty good at knocking them down, too. His senior year at East Wake High School, near Raleigh, he was captain of his team, All Metro, Metro 3-A Player of the Year, and All East.
Coming Friday: Teaching Moment