Let Me Put You On The Game

I've heard this Woodsonian Family Parable several times. I think it bears repeating:

Way back in the day, there was a young boy who got a nice, shiny, expensive football for Chistmas. Of course, as any young boy would, he wanted to go right outside and play with it.

So, he took his younger brother and went to the backyard that Christmas morning and they threw the leather ball around. It was fun.

One of the older brother's spirals, which were exceptionally strong for a kid of his age, happened to go through his brother's hands, strike a tree and then fall to the cold hard ground.

The older boy ran over to fetch it up. He examined the ball, worried about what he might find. And sure enough, he saw it. A tiny little smudge on the tip of the ball. Just a little scratch, probably, from the tree bark.

To anyone else's eyes, this wouldn't have looked like anything but a nice, shiny, expensive, new football. Just a little smaller then regulation.

To the boy, though, it was tarnished. He had to act fast and clean it up. So he ran inside and found a rag, put some rubbing alcohol or whatnot on it and scrubbed the scratch.

Only the scratch didn't come off and didn't get better. It turned to a dot of beige discoloration on the brand new football on Chistmas morning.

Still, it was only a tiny dot. The boy could go out and throw the ball around with any football fan, young or old, and they would think nothing of it. Even if they did, it was a damn football from the untamed streets and backyards of North Jersey! Of course, it would have a scratch or two on it.

But, in the boy's mind, it could still be salvaged and still be the best, shiniest, newest football of any street or backyard in the whole world. So he scrubbed some more, thinking the dot would magically turn back and be perfect. But the dot, of course, got bigger and bigger and bigger.

Soon it wasn't just a dot and was, instead, the whole front quarter of the football.

At this point, though, the boy then decided that it would make more sense to just keep scrubbing. Instead of having a football that was three quarters shiny and new and one quarter scratched and discolored, it would be better to have it all one way. And the football couldn't be un-scratched or un-discolored, he reasoned.

So he went about rubbing even more color and leather gripping off the ball, until, it was uniform and, effectively, ruined.

It wasn't long before he realized that he had overreacted to the initial scratch. But there was nothing he could do now.

Game over.

This being a family parable, I can relate to the young boy's struggle. And I would imagine that most people can, to some degree.