What Little I Know

I mentioned last week in one of these entries that this is the twentieth year I've coached at WCS basketball camps and I may pass one hundred total sessions in the next two weeks. Over all, I would guess I'm close to a one hundred fifty sessions of camp if you count the other camps I've worked and the eleven camps I put on by myself with the help of my high school squads. One thing that's new this year is our holding camp on our West Campus which is the former Westland YMCA we purchased a number of years ago. The logistics of having camp at a new location creates challenges but we're navigating them smoothly. The thing about kids camps is that you never know what to expect.

We're blessed with a really good bunch of campers this week; hard working, respectful, relatively focused which isn't easy in the lower and middle school grades! One thing that's never changed in my decades of coaching is you meet delightful youngsters that you wish would attend your school- sometimes, that ends up happening!  One young lady on the afternoon team I'm working with, the Thunder, falls into that category. Our varsity girls' coach, Augusta Guthrie, knows her from coaching her older sister in AAU. The siblings are both on the Thunder despite a three year age difference. Augusta told me today that the younger sister goes to a Mandarin immersion school where they spend half the day learning in English and half in Chinese. During a break, I asked the young lady about her education and she repeated what Augusta had said. I told her I've spent two summers in China. She may have asked or I may have told her I know a little Chinese. I used the term yidianr which is Mandarin for a little. As soon as it left my mouth, she started speaking to me a mile a minute in Chinese! I laughed and said, "No! Not that much!" I should have explained my Chinese vocabulary is about a sum total of five words. We laughed and moved on to the next basketball drill but in that interchange, I learned a valuable lesson.

Sometimes, we try to impress other people with how much we know about something when in reality, we know very little. Sometimes, when I meet Chinese people who are visiting our school, I will tell them I spent a month in Hunan Province but I couldn't eat the food because it was too spicy. They laugh because every one in China seems to believe the spiciest food anywhere in their country is in fact in Hunan Province. I guess I think it gives me street cred in Asia because I know some culinary bit of data. In total, I've spent seven weeks or so in China but perhaps like to pass myself off as some kind of expert. It's usually better to keep what we know in certain areas to ourselves because there is a good chance our limitations will be exposed, like my camper inadvertently did. There are many Biblical warnings that we should be extremely careful in the way we speak and to let our words be few. In a nutshell, it's the repeated admonition from the Lord for His children to always be humble. I wonder what the word for that is in Mandarin? I need to expand my Chinese vocabulary by at least one word! I'm sure it would save me any further embarrassing conversations with campers.

Applicable quote of the day:
“If I’m selling to you, I speak your language. If I’m buying, dann müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen.”
 Willy Brandt

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
www.hawleybooks.com
E-mail me at steve@hawleybooks.com