Tag Archives: demeaning

Croquet

Croquet: (n) a game played by knocking wooden balls through metal wickets with mallets.

I was totally astounded that somehow or another, with the passing of years and obvious wrangling of internal forgetfulness, I had wiped the word “croquet” from my mind as a therapeutic solution.

Because when I suddenly heard it, some horrible memories flooded my mind.

Yes, when I was a boy—a young boy—my parents decided to buy me a croquet set to play in our back yard.

I am not dedicated enough to the writing of this essay to gamble my fragile psyche by going into too much detail about the game.

Let me put it this way:

Croquet was obviously conceived by someone who only had two or three distinct abilities, and wanted to showcase them in a single gaming effort, knowing that others might certainly not have any of the predispositions to survive the damn game at all.

A wooden mallet hitting wooden balls, which must travel on grass and go through little wire tunnels called wickets that are suspended in the soil, and in doing so, step by step reaching the holy peg you must hit with your ball to make you the winner.

With football you get a touchdown.

Baseball, a home run or at least a hit.

Basketball? Swish. Two points.

Croquet? A wooden ball that barely rolls over grass through a wire container several times over to end up supposedly victoriously banging against a wood rod.

Not only is there no payoff, but the amount of frustration that goes into the process is downright demeaning.

I played with it two times—once because my parents stood over me on my birthday and made me, and the second time was when a younger cousin came to visit who thought he was so smart, and I thought surely I could defeat him at this ridiculous endeavor.

I was so pitiful at it that he beat me.

I will now try to retreat back into my sanctuary of disremembering, hoping that the word “croquet” never comes up again, and I won’t have to relive the horror of wooden mallets, wooden balls, metal frameworks and a winning peg.

I just want you all to appreciate that I went through this today just for you.

You are loved.

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Checklist

Checklist: (n) a list of things to be done

A checklist is most effective if it is written, attached to a clipboard, with a pen or pencil nearby to cross off things that have been accomplished. Without all these ingredients, it is very similar to writing an essay on “What I Would Do If I Lived on the Moon.”

In other words, well-intentioned but impractical.

The reason people are afraid of organization is that it demands we organize. In organizing, we lose two very essential units of our egotism:

  1. The power to be completely spontaneous
  2. And the erroneous notion that we are so smart we will remember everything we need to do.

Therefore, on this issue there are three kinds of people:

  • Those who have a checklist but never use it
  • Those who refuse to make a checklist because it’s demeaning and stupid
  • And those who have a checklist who do not mind being considered stupid or find it demeaning–because they get things done.

It is completely alright to be suspicious of anyone who likes a checklist. After all, it’s weird–similar to coming into the acquaintance of a nine-year-old boy who likes wearing his bicycle helmet.

But it is very important–whether fretfully, fearfully or faithfully–for us to pursue the organization of our thoughts the very moment that inspiration is delivered to us, and use ink or pencil to memorialize them for all time.

Or at least until we have the erotic pleasure of crossing them off of our list.

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