Soccer Balls, Spiders, and Life

I have four children ranging in ages from twenty to eight. The two oldest have always gotten along well for a brother and sister. But they have also always been contrary. They like to joke that if I offered them chocolate or dog manure, the second one would choose dog manure just to disagree with the first.

Fortunately our younger two don’t have that whole thing going on yet. But they do have very different personalities. The oldest one (ten) has never been scared of anything that I can remember. No ride at any amusement park scares him. He no problems with heights, close spaces, meeting new people. He just seems to naturally assume the world will treat him well and he treats everyone else that way.

The younger of the two sees everything as a potential danger. He reminds me of the little elephant in Tarzan who says of the lake water, “Looks questionable to me.” My littlest guy thinks everything looks questionable. He doesn’t want to run through the sprinklers for fear a bee might shoot up out of the grass. He regularly checks his bed for spiders. He HATES heights. He still won’t let me teach him to ride a bike, Oddly enough he is okay with most rides, but he worries all the way up to and onto the ride that something might break. The last time I took him on a hike, he wanted to turn back because, “Mother nature doesn’t like me.”

Recently they’ve both started doing sports. I didn’t give them especially athletic genes, so I always approach the sports scene with some trepidation. The older boy has my eye hand coordination, but charges fearlessly into any event. The younger one actually has better motor skills, but is sure he is going to die.

Recently two events occurred. The first happened with the younger boy playing soccer. As always, he would stand back, only kicking the ball if it came right to him. Because of where and how he would stand, he became kind of a designated target for the ball. Within three games he’d been hit in the face, the rear, several times in the stomach, and once in a place which isn’t a problem with girls’ soccer.

I tried to explain to him that if he’d run toward the ball, and get right up on it, he’d be less likely to keep playing the punching bag. Instead, he’d stand back, cowering if the ball came anywhere near him, or even running away. It was a long season.

A few days later, I asked the older of the two to go grab a tarp off the lawn and put it on the deck. He came back and told me there was a spider on the tarp and he thought it might bite him. I explained that if he just grabbed one end and gave it a sharp tug, it would knock the spider off. He did, and it did.

I think of this in relation to writing, but also in relation to life. When I was fifteen, I was always looking for a job. One November I saw an ad for a shopping mall Santa Claus. Of course, being fifteen and weighing maybe 120 pounds at most, I wasn’t such a good candidate. But my mother never let me say no. “At least call them,” she said. “It can’t hurt.” Next thing I knew, I was making twice as much holiday money as any of my friends. The same thing with working as a chef in a French restaurant, and many other jobs that didn’t seem to be a good fit at first.

I’ve met a lot of authors with a lot of different personalities. As I mentioned last week, many of them are pretty shy in person. But one thing they all seem to have in common is a willingness to take the tarp by the corner and give it a yank. They didn’t know whether they would succeed or fail, but at some point they rolled up their sleeves, said, “I’m going to try that and got their hands dirty.”

The people who try new things in life are the people who succeed. Of course they are also the people who fail. But even in failing they learn and progress. You can’t publish a book unless you write it. You can’t write it if you don’t sit down and get to it. And you won’t get to it until you decide you can.

If there’s something you’ve always wanted to do, but were afraid of failing, take that pack off of your shoulders and give yourself permission to fail. I have no idea how my new fantasy series will do, but I know it will do better than if I hadn’t ever tried to write it in the first place. You can stand back and get hit in the face with soccer balls and bit by spiders or you can jump into the middle of things and take control.

PS Anon, do you have any soccer advice for me?