Back when there were still a few grownups in charge, it was understood that kids are, in fact, kids, and that a major part of healthy socialization is performing a kind of differential diagnosis on your identity — if I’m not this, then I must be that, until you finally realize that you’re more than any of them, or all of them put together. Younger readers will have to take it on faith that this was possible, but I myself was, at one point, a preppie, a jock, a skater, a Goth, a burnout, and I think I’m forgetting a few. If that seems dubious, then this will really blow your circuits: I went out for, and made, the baseball team even though I didn’t particularly like baseball and wasn’t particularly good at it.
30 years ago, that kind of thing wasn’t just possible, it was pretty easy, since Little League was still about silly stuff like having fun, and when high school coaches gave you the speech about teamwork and character building, he — get this — actually meant it. I know how crazy this sounds, but it was pretty much expected of us benchwarmers to take the piss out of the kid who carried on like he was some kind of Big League prospect. Nobody but parents came to the games, anyway, and wearing a letter jacket didn’t help you get girls (I tested this hypothesis extensively). Nowadays, of course, Little League squads are ruthlessly culled, and if you make the team, you’d better be ready to be put on a nutrition plan and workout schedule, to attend summer skills camps, to be no-shit scouted, by professionals, at an age where you’re still not really sure what girls are for.
You don’t get to be “a jock” for a semester, in other words. You are one, and that’s all you are, starting before puberty, and woe to the kid who only made the team because his hormonal clock was set a little ahead of the other boys’. The kid who can throw 75 at age ten, as we all know, is 99.8% certain to still be throwing 75 at age sixteen, when everyone on the JV team can catch up to it. In my day, that’s when the coach pulled you aside and explained a few things to you, gently but firmly pointing you towards the Model UN Club. He was good at it, and since he was good at giving those “teamwork and character” speeches, too, he’d tell you that this, right here, is one of those situations, so man up and accept your limitations.
Ah well. So much for being a jock. Cross it off the list, and try not to notice the relief in Mom’s eyes — and, yeah, the little bit of sadness in Dad’s — when they realize they don’t have to schlep you all over the goddamn place on summer evenings, sitting in the bleachers watching you ride the pine. Time to find something else …
Severian, “Alienation”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-10-29.
April 4, 2023
QotD: We used to have this concept of “healthy socialization” for kids
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