Posted on 06/08/2013 4:39:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
So, last Saturday I'm back on the ball field coaching my 9-year-old boy's little league team along with three other fathers. We lose big. Why? Because it was hot. Yes, I know what you're thinking: Wasn't it hot for the other team? Stop with the logic, OK?
My team wilted in the fourth inning. In fact, three of the players cried. One missed his mother. I told him the game would be over shortly and she was looking forward to seeing him. He accepted it, but struck out anyway.
The right fielder cried when the ball hit his thumb after he booted it. The catcher shed tears when he was called out at first base. Where was Tom Hanks when I needed him?
But above all, the heat dominated the game. It was about 90 degrees, and the field was dusty. The kids were appalled. They are used to climate-control. When it's hot, they stay inside and enjoy the air conditioning. When it's cold, the house is cozily warm. So when they are forced to play six innings outside on a scorching day, there is much angst.
When I was 9 years old, I was hot all the time in the summer. My tiny Levittown house had no air conditioning, and I slept upstairs directly underneath the tar-infested roof. So one August day, I had the following dialogue with my father:
"Dad, could we get air conditioning?"
"Why? You have a fan in your room."
"But the fan just blows the hot air around."
"So don't turn it on."
End of conversation. Later, at the dinner table, my father told my sister and me about how hot it was in Brooklyn where he grew up. At least on Long Island, there's a "sea breeze."
My sister and I looked confused. The ocean was 15 miles away.
Our dog, a German shepherd named Barney, was so hot he didn't move for hours, lying supine on the linoleum kitchen floor.
"I think Barney may be dead," I told my parents.
"Don't be a wise guy," my father retorted.
We never did get air conditioning until I moved out in 1971. Then two units arrived. I still hold a grudge.
But back to the ball field.
We lost the game 12 to 4, but the team really didn't care. They quickly left the diamond for more comfortable precincts. Most of them are really good kids, far smarter than I was at their age -- but far softer, as well.
America is a place where you can succeed no matter who you are. I am proof of that. But you must work very hard and be willing to endure pain. You must set a goal and win in the marketplace, no matter the air temperature. You must pay the price for success.
These kids don't know that. But they do know two things. First, they don't want to be hot. And second, they don't have to be.
Heaven help us.
IMHO
Billy O. How old are you dude? And you have a 9er? Well, at least at your age you can afford him with the bucks you got stacked up. Glad you’re bein’ a good dad in any case. But, I sure don’t agree with you on a lot of other stuff. LOL!
Bill OReilly is a blow hard with a supersized ego, but he is a tremendously gifted writer.
Back then my parents had an AC unit for their bedroom. The kids had nothing and never ever did we ask for AC for our bedrooms. No space in our house had AC except for that one bedroom.
Also back then before AC was pervasive..... Movie theaters would advertise their air conditioning. To come in out of the heat and see a movie
“Don’t be a wise guy,” my father retorted.”
Geeez, my son is only just 3 and that’s ALL I ever seem to say to him.
You had a school?
Where I grew up we just went straight to juvie.
And it was so cold and icy and we were so poor we had to wrap barb wire around our bare feet so we wouldn’t fall.
Grew up in the sweltering Mississippi heat and humidity with no A/C-we 10 kids all made palletts on the living room floor, collected all the fans in there, and opened the front and back doors (we lived in the country). Sometimes we just camped outaide, but the mosquitos might torment you all night then.
Where I grew up we just went straight to juvie.
Well they called it "school" but it was actually a rock quarry......
What part of the country? Outside of Boston we had some hot nights and used fans. A/C really wasn’t necessary.
You were lucky! We used to dream of having barbed wire....
We finally convinced my elderly parents to let us air condition their house in the 1980’s. We even told them we’d pay for any increase in their electrical bill. When we next visited (in the heat of midwest summer), it was hot and humid...inside their house was hotter and more humid. We asked why they didn’t turn on the AC. Their response “It makes cold drafts...” Go figure.
Baseball builds character, and has both team and individual components which sometimes cause players to actually think.
It’s only a matter of time before the left demands that the game be banned.
With the eighty five percent humidity, it is.
LOL
I remember back in the late 50s our gym teacher was a guy who had been in the Korean war and continually told us how “soft” we were compared to the kids in Korea.
When I was a child in the late 60's and '70's, my parents installed an AC unit in our living room window. If a night was too hot, we slept in sleeping bags on the floor of the living room.
Even in the '90's, when I was pregnant with my first child, we lived in a sweltering attic apartment and had only a window AC unit in one room.
IMHO, air conditioning is overused today. And, anyway, the sound of fans can be very relaxing.
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