Bombardment

When I was a kid in junior high school, we played this game in gym class called bombardment. 

The gym class of about 50 boys was divided into two teams who opposed each other inside the gym.  

Five volleyballs were distributed to each side along with two giant canvass beachballs.

The goal was to beat the other team by knocking their players out of the game.  You knocked them out of the game by hitting them with the ball.  If their player caught the ball you were knocked out of the game.

Now, if you were an athlete with good hand-eye coordination, the game was fun.

But if you were a scaredy-cat like I was, the game wasn’t so much fun.

The players who weren’t as athletically skilled and who were a little afraid would cower near the back of the gym behind the bleachers because they didn’t want to get hit.  

I was one of those guys.

Those athletes could really wing the ball.

With accuracy.

Now, that game took place when I was in the 7th and 8th grades.

But then something happened in my life.  My father died, and when my father died I got kind of angry about life.

Maybe people couldn’t see it; maybe I hid it from people.  But I was angry.

And I decided that I really didn’t like popular people.

Athletes always seemed to be popular.

So when I got into ninth grade, I attended, of course, a different school; but the games we played in gym class were the same.

We continued to play that game of bombardment.

But I had changed.

I didn’t feel like cowering in the back of the gym anymore.  I wanted to kick some ass.  And not just any ass, but jock-ass.

Even though I wasn’t athletically gifted, I discovered that aggression could make up for a lack of talent.

And I really enjoyed trying to hurt those jocks who thought they were all that.

I just didn’t like the way they hung around the school corridors intimidating other students as they walked by.

They were like little Anthony Faucis, little Coach Ks.

Every day, these clowns would hang out at their spot, and every day people had to walk by these entitled assholes.

You could feel them staring at you when you walked by.

Who were these guys?

Well, I guess I’d had enough.

So I took it out on them in gym class.

I’m not saying I aimed for their heads, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t not aiming for their heads.

Later in life, I discovered that this same principle of aggression applied to other fields as well.

Anyone who has played Texas Hold’em can tell you that aggression is a powerful force to be reckoned with.

If you are aggressive in Texas Hold’em in a reasonable way, you can do a lot of damage with lousy cards.

It’s always better to be aggressive than timid when playing with the big boys.

They say that your fear becomes you.

It does.

As to why your fear becomes you resides in you making moves out of fear that place you in a more compromised position.

And so it is with the war against the coronavirus.

Make no mistake about it, we are in a war against the coronavirus.  And we are fighting this war incorrectly.

Currently we are fighting a defensive war. The problem with defensive wars is that they are usually lost. If we continue along this course of action we will lose many, many more people than we need to lose.

Our fear will have become us.

Our leaders desire to save lives.  So to save lives they lock us inside our houses where we cannot communicate to develop herd immunity. We are taking a wimp’s approach in life. We are taking the same approach I took when I was in seventh and eighth grades where I cowered behind the bleachers.

By cowering behind those bleachers I only increased my chances of getting hit.

When I stepped out into the open and aggressively attacked the enemy I fared much better.  

Yes, I took some hits, but I gained much more than I lost.

We need to do the same in this epic battle against the coronavirus.

We can not be afraid to throw the ball at its head.

That virus will never respect us until we do.

 

 

Sincerely,

Archer Crosley

7/24/2020

Copyright 2020   Archer Crosley   All Rights Reserved