Jan. 16, 2003 - 20:16 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Surprise

What a blow it is to learn when young that nothing can be mastered easily. Anything that requires thought, ingenuity or muscularity requires intelligent effort. I am thinking tonight about my proficiency at roller skating on sidewalk roller skates way back then. I was good, I was fast, I was the ball bearing kid. Of course the scabs and bruises that were incurred while learning to skate were long forgotten.

We didn't have the term solidified then, but when it came to ice skating, my idea was, "Huh, that'll be a piece of cake." Hah, it was, maybe, but a piece too darn big and steely hard. Dad taught me how to lace my skates firmly and gave me what information he could. He too, thought I would be a natural at ice skating.

I think my first time was at Washington Park Lake. I walked up from home, found a place to stash my shoes and carefully donned the instruments of torture. With supreme confidence I stood up and struck out, flat on my face, elbows and knees. My ankles were like wet spaghetti. I tried many times and couldn't manage much more that several steps before I went down like a thrown rag doll.

I had to leave and go home, the sun was going down and I was wet from sliding on the ice. Every bone and joint in my body hurt including that thick head of mine.

Like with roller skating, I paid my dues. No broken bones but with consequent highly bruised ego and shaken confidence. But like most of us it was try and fall, try and fall, try for a few more steps before falling. And then one day I was skating, my hair blowing behind me, cold air stinging my nostrils, eyes tearing from the breeze out at the very edge of the cleared area -- but I was actually skating. I was amazed and overjoyed.

When winter would come and the lakes freeze over and the city would clear skating space, I would be there. I began to be able to play the games on ice the other kids played. I was proud when I learnd to stop and spray kids with ice, that had been a source of envy for me for a long time. Going like heck, jumping up, coming down sideways and my skates shaving ice in showers.

I think that began to teach me to understand that whatever I wanted to do that required some form of expertise, mental, physical and sometimes a combination would take a period of practice to attain a degree of perfection.

I caddied for Dad for awhile, longing to be a golfer. I wanted to golf so bad my teeth hurt. I traded a kid for a 5 iron (used to be called Mashies), sunk a few tin cans in our yard and began the process of learning. Traded for a putter with another kid and my learning continued. One day my Dad gave me a cheap bag holding a mid iron and a brassie and we went golfing. I was a disaster with the wood but the 5 iron and midiron and putter I was in good shape. Took me awhile to get as much distance as can be had with the midiron, but I got there.

One day on a course with sand greens I broke a hundred and considered myself a golfer.

Work or play a learning and practice period had to be worked through before I could hold my head up and say, "I can xxx," or, "I am a xxx."

As I grew, although I didn't pray for patience, he saw that I had much practice in learning that as I did in any other thing. Maybe more and taking longer probably. In fact I still am trying to keep in practice in that skill.

As a kid it seemed to me that there should only be moments between the desire to do something and having the ability to do so. 'Tain't so, at least for me 'twasn't.

Along the way was noticed the desire to excel in something depended on my will to practice, practice, practice. My amount of skill depended on how much I desired to be good at something and to what degree I was willing to put the time into the pratice that it required. When I was quite young, that came as a Surprise . . . . . . . .

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