I've mellowed some as a coach in recent years but not in the ways you might think. One way I've loosened up with my basketball players is in footwear. Not as in shoes but as in socks. I give the kids leeway in their sneakers which can be terribly overpriced but in the past, I've required white socks only in both practice and games. Last year, I changed the rule, allowing the girls to wear whatever they like for practice sessions but with a team policy of all back socks in actual contests. It's been a good upgrade- I've even started wearing non-white apparel under my New Balance kicks! Sometimes I even surprise myself!
One of the girls on my team this year is Piper, an 8th grader. I've known her practically since she was an infant and coached her in our summer camps since she was four. Piper has an amazing repertoire of socks that she wears to practice each morning. (We're still together as a team even though our game schedule concluded five weeks ago.) I mentioned to her how much I admired her choice of footwear and guess what? Piper gave me three pairs of NIKE socks for Christmas, patriotic in colors with a red pair, a white pair, and a blue pair! They, pictured above, quickly found their way into my wardrobe rotation and while I'm not claiming to be as fashionable as my players, at least I'm sort of in the conversation.
Guess what I discovered when I put on the first pair for the first time? These socks come designated and Right and Left. (Or Left and Right- don't want to offend anybody!) I'm not sure why. Maybe they are made differently based on your foot of preference or maybe it alters the ways the designs are displayed on the inside versus the outside of the foot. Regardless, it threw me for a loop! I always believed a sock is a sock is a sock but not anymore! Wearing these three pair has illuminated parts of my habitual nature that I'd apparently been unaware of all my life. One is that I always put a sock on my left foot first and the second is that I always put on my right shoe first. Thank goodness shoes are still directionally differentiated!
Maybe it's not so strange that socks are becoming as specialized as well as gloves and sporting equipment. Right and left are separate and maybe not always equal. After all, the sheep went to the right and reward and the goats to the left and destruction in Jesus' parable of those two farm animals. In the Sermon on the Mount, the Savior teaches that our left and right hands should be oblivious to the other when charitably giving. In fact, knowledge seems to be a theme of the right/left setup as God tells Jonah that the people in Nineveh don't know their right hand from their left. (Jonah 4:11) Right, though, is seen as superior to left throughout the Scriptures. Does that and should that apply to my socks, though? I want to be right and I don't want to be left behind. I will say this. Even though I can't tell any difference between the R and L, when I accidentally put the wrong sock on my left foot the other day, I felt compelled to take it off and switch. Don't judge me- anyone in their right mind would have done the same.
Applicable quote of the day:
We only had white socks in Romania. But when I used to come back from the States, I used to bring back pink and yellow socks with all kind of designs, and hair clips and elastic bands for the ponytail that had colorful designs.
Nadia Comaneci
God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
www.hawleybooks.com
E-mail me at steve@hawleybooks.com
No comments:
Post a Comment