Dear Boys,
You probably have heard your mother and I talking about “Forks”. As in “Fork that” or “all out of forks to give” etc. There is a reason why.
You come from a long line of “fork-givers”. People who got worked up about politics and went to war. People who refused to accept their situation and instead moved to unseen, unknown locales. People who really care. Who care so much, in fact, that it gets in the way of doing justice to yourself.
I have been, and probably always will be, someone who gives a lot of, what we’ll call on this G-rated blog, “forks”. I give lots of forks about my lesson plans, about what students achieve and don’t, about where people cross the street, and use grammar, and speak to others, and show care for the world around them, and, naturally, how you two grow up. I give so many forks in a day, I often don’t have many left to give about myself, my health, or my welfare.
There’s nothing wrong with caring. Giving forks is good. But please boys, give a fork about what you do, don’t give a fork over how it is received.
Few things show this better than Grenoble Foot’s disastrous attack last Friday night against AC Ajaccio.
That’s three chances. Gilt-edged chances. Gimme-put style chances. Your-great-grammy-Zoe-would-have-finished-it-and-she’s-been-dead-ten-years. Chances. But they didn’t go in. Not for Jessy Benet, not for Arsene Elogo, not for Florian Raspentino. The result was sealed. And defeat was made still more painful.
If you give a fork about the game, your job, your team, then it would be easy to be upset.
Obviously, fans would be upset. The coaches would be upset. The players would be upset. That kind of performance is not why you go into sports. You aren’t there to be the butt of the joke; you’re there to win.
But fans don’t put in the effort, they just watch the entertainment. Coaches don’t make the plays they just help train players to make it happen. Even players can’t control every part of the game; they just participate in it.
If you give a fork, it might seem like you ought to be upset when it goes wrong. It’s certainly how I’ve always responded when the class goes wrong, or people are rude and unsafe in public, or I don’t change the world three times over before breakfast. But that’s not the way to do it.
By all means, give a fork about how you prepare. Give it your best effort. And when it’s done, accept that it leaves your hands. My meticulous lesson may not move the needle in a student’s understanding. Your preferred candidate may lose. And you may, despite years of preparation, strong game planning, and the will of thousands of fans miss…and miss…and miss again.
Otherwise you may find that you’ve lost your pride in your own work, in the face of things beyond your control. And that would be a forking shame.
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