The Game of Life
Swen Nater

The Little League game was about to begin
On a perfectly wonderful day.
One team sprinted out
With a spirited shout,
As the boys were excited to play.

As their coach saw the field with his players in place,
A vision took over his sight.
Each Little League lad
Grew the age of a dad,
Complete with the beard and the height.

His pitcher, an artist, composed to create,
On a canvas awaiting and bare.
His stroke on the ball
Made it spin and then fall
As it curved and it carved through the air.

His catcher, a general, positioned in place,
Was leading the rest of the pack.
On his signal and sign
They joined to combine
With a quick and successful attack.

His shortstop, a surgeon, with quickness and skill,
When it seemed as thought death cast its fate,
On the double he caught
What the grave almost got,
And threw lifelessness out at the plate.

The outfield consisted of no lesser men.
Three statesmen with not one reproach.
On third was a preacher
On second a teacher
And on first, a Little League coach.

As the vision grew fainter, the coach stopped and thought.
The epiphany cut like a knife.
Baseball was more
Than a game and a score;
It was practice for the game of life.

So You Want to be Seven Feet Tall? Think again.

Noticing my height  while we passed each other on the sidewalk, a gregarious lady stopped me today and boldly said, " Sonny! I wish I were that tall!" Does she really? If she only knew, how painfully-difficult it is for a seven-footer, living in an under six-foot world, I believe she would change her mind. So, if by chance you're reading this post, lady, let me explain.

When I stand up, my ears pop.

When in a hotel room bed, I accidentally turned the TV off with my foot.  

In airplane bathrooms, it is impossible to go. Thank Heaven for Flomax. 

I wrestle with the person who is sitting in front of me in airplane, as he tries to recline his seat.

Once I sat in the bulkhead seat and enjoyed stretching my legs into first class. The flight attendant asked for my credit card and charged me. .

In a packed movie theater, the person behind me says, "I'll just get the DVD when it comes out."

When close to an airport, I am required by law to wear a cap with a blinking light.

My shoes cover two zip codes. 

For rent-a-cars, I have to order one with a sunroof. 

As a youth, we went to the beach and I went in the ocean first. My sister asked my mother, "Can go in too?" She replied, "Not now; Swen's using it."

I'm 290 pounds. When I get on an elevator, it has to go down.

How to Remember Names

How to Remember a
Person’s Name

 

When you see a friend, the name pops into your head immediately.
That is because you have created a direct association between that person’s
face and the name. Association is made possible through repetition. Here is a
four-step plan.

 

1. Association

Find a facial feature and make a bizarre
association.

Example: Name is Doug. Feature is
big ears. Picture him digging a hole with his ear instead of a shovel. He Doug
a hole.

 

2. Repeat
   the Name

When introduced, ask the person to
say the name again. Then, during conversation, use the name as much as possible
without overdoing it.

Example: You name is Doug, correct?
Nice to meet you Doug……..I was thinking, Doug, …… etc. When you say the name
while looking at the face, the association begins to strengthen.  

 

3. Write
   the Name Down

John Wooden said, “If you want to
remember something, write it down.” After the meeting, write the name down and
say the name as you write it. Again, the association will strengthen.

 

4. Recall
   the Name Later

During the rest of the day, recall
the person’s name a few times and then once the next morning.  

This Poem was written by John Wooden and shared with me.

At times when I am feeling low,
I hear from a friend and then,
My worries start to go away,
And I am on the mend.

No matter what the doctors say,
And their studies never end,
The best cure of all,
When spirits fall,
Is a kind word from a friend.

The Magical Door at My School

The Magical Door at My School

Swen Nater

 

Shhh.

Let nobody hear this, but here’s something cool.

There’s a magical door, right here at my school.

Every time I walk in, I can’t possibly leave,

For I’ve witnessed some things that you would not believe.  

 

I entered last Monday; ‘twas right around three,

And a tall dinosaur began charging at me.

Every stomp of each step made a thunderous sound.

So I shook and I shivered and so did the ground.

 

But on Tuesday I walked through that magical door,

And I heard a bat crack and a deafening roar.

The slide and the throw toward the homeward route;

Through the dust I could hear the ump screaming, “You’re out!”

Revisiting Wednesday, I flew through the air,

In a rocket ship powered by flame-flying flare.

I then visited Venus and sailed past the sun,

And I galloped through galaxies. Man that was fun.

 

And on Thursday, I walked through that magical door,

And an earthquake was shaking—more and then more.

So I tilted and toppled and staggered and stumbled,

And the whole place just rattled and rippled and rumbled.  

 

Returning on Friday, I searched undersea,

I flew with the falcon and buzzed with the bee.

I went down the Grand Canyon while riding a mule,

Through that magical door that’s right here at my school.

 

You want to go too? Well then here is a game.

This magical door has a sign with its name.

And the letters that make up the name of the door,

You will find in this poem if you dare to explore.

 

The Glass Half-Filled  

 

The optimist says the glass is half full.

The pessimist says the glass is half empty.

The project manager says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

The cynic wonders who drank the other half.

The worrier frets that the remaining half will evaporate by next morning.

The entrepreneur sees the glass as undervalued by half its potential.

The first engineer says the glass is over-designed for the quantity of water.

The man at the bar wonders who is paying for the next round.

Coach Wooden and the Perfect Lesson Plan

Coach John Wooden and the Perfect Lesson Plan

Swen Nater

From 1964 to 1975 Coach John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins men’s basketball team accomplished the following:

10 national championships, 7 in a row
88 consecutive wins
38 consecutive playoff wins
4 perfect seasons

That is “sustained success.” Many coaches have won championships but few have won two in a row. Still fewer won three in a row. And no coach in men’s basketball has ever won ten consecutive titles. How did this happen? How was one man, who had various assistant coaches and players, accomplish that? Did he have the best talent in the country every year? No. I suggest, the secret may lie in his teaching, particularly the daily lesson plan.

Those who know Coach Wooden know he was obsessed with reaching perfection in every part of his life. Two of his most-known quotes are,

Make each day your masterpiece.

and,

You haven’t lived a perfect day until you have done something for someone without the slightest thought of receiving anything in return.

As a coach, he was internally-driven to produce the “perfect lesson plan,” obsessed with the illusive objective of making the plan for the day’s practice session a masterpiece to equal Rembrandt’s Night Watch. But he knew it could never be done. Yet, when he sat down every morning to create that minute-by-minute plan, he jettisoned the demons telling him of his certain failure and commenced to draw on the plans and notes of the past. As he continued, his heart leapt with excitement and anticipation. Was this the day he would finally do it? Was this the day he would come home to Nelly after practice and tell her he had reached perfection? That plan looked like it was the one he had been waiting for.

Every day he would try and every day he would fail. How could his mind take it? How could he remain sane, knowing at the end of practice he would drop his head once more, knowing the next day he must start from scratch? As Harriet Braiker wrote,

 

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.

 

In his heart he knew it, yet he could not imagine a day without the drive to reach the top. He could not possibly conjure up the vision of making a practice plan that was a copy of another or something he casually put together. John Wooden was not capable of saying, “That’s good enough.”

Was Coach Wooden insane? Was the effort to get something he would never be able to get mentally destructive? There are some who would think, never being satisfied is not good, William Shakespeare, in King Lear, being one.

 

Striving to be better, oft we mar what’s well.

 

What if The Bard told Wooden this very thing to his face? What would Coach do? I think he would say, “Yes, it’s OK to, in my quest for perfection, stop and see how far I’ve come, but I’m afraid to because I may become satisfied and the smallest degree of complacency can retard my momentum toward the goal.”

 

Many joke about perfection. Wilt Chamberlain, NBA great, wrote,

They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they’d made up their minds.

An unknown author wrote,

 The most difficult part of attaining perfection is finding something to do for an encore.

 

Coach Wooden didn’t think the quest for perfection was a joke at all; he was extremely serious about it. And somehow, in his soberness and his daily failure, he remained a person of great balance, character, and sanity. Perhaps what Vince Lombardi wrote helped him.

 Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.

The result for Wooden was, sustained success at the highest level. He once said,

 

It takes talent to get to the top. It takes character to stay there.

 Coach Wooden’s character was demonstrated in his drive to make the perfect lesson plan. All the successes I wrote about at the beginning, are a byproduct of just that.

 

Swen

 

The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when he fills out a job application form. Stanly J. Randall