What Made You Smile/Laugh Today?

AngelicAssassin said:

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Bi_Kitty said:

Tonight talking to Bunny and domly ones.....

SERIOUSLY....WTF!!!!!!!! LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOO

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BiBunny said:

LOL, they like you. And while he looks vaguely bored over there, I know he's secretly drooling and going "Ooh, foursome!" in his head.

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Bi_Kitty said:

Yeah I know that's what he is doing. But seriously...wtf....ok, I'll stop with that. But damn. Why? I just don't understand and I find it funny. LOL.

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BiBunny said:

... a horny blonde, a horny brunette, and a horny redhead....

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Yummmm... smörgåsbord!

Or one of those jokes: "A horny blonde, a horny brunette, and a horny redhead walk into a bar and...."

MisterSir said:

My copies of the first two volumes of Scott Pilgrim finally fucking arrived - I mean, I've only been waiting for most of a month for the damn thing but at least now I get the sweet sweetness.

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Keroin said:

Welcome to my world. Mind you, getting something within a month is considered "Express Delivery" 'round these parts.

My happy today?

SUPPLY SHIP!!!!!!

Fresh carrots!

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Sir_Winston54 said:

The "Where are all the men?" thread reminding me of some good friends (coaches of my and other teams), and some of the great kids I got to work with in those years.

Yeah, there were some really good times way back then...

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Keroin said:

Cool. What was it like to be the coach of a team? This is something I've never experienced. I dreaded team sports because I am not a natural athlete and the thought of a group of people depending on my less-than-stellar abilities was far too much pressure.

What were the best parts?

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Coaching is cool, especially for me. I'm not a natural athlete, either. The things I do well in athletic endeavors are because I worked to *learn* how to do them; there was no instinctual reaction force that gave me the ability to do them. I've coached baseball and softball (both fast- and slow-pitch, men's teams, women's teams, girls' teams, and mixed adults), soccer, tennis and bowling. With baseball and softball, I had *some* natural ability, I guess, but never star quality in any particular skill. Soccer and tennis are perhaps the oddest possible thing for me to coach, with tennis being the absolute oddest. I'm slow of foot - very - and since I never even picked up a tennis racket until I was in my 30s, the kindest thing one can say about my swing is that it would look decent on a baseball/softball diamond

In both soccer and tennis, though, I could watch the players as they practiced or played, and see exactly what they needed to do differently to be successful... and then show them, in slow motion, what that was. I can hit a killer topspin backhand standing in one spot and having the ball gently fed to me exactly where I want it so that I can take a moderately paced swing to show a player how to do it. But put me in a match, and I'm SOL on just about anything I have to hit a backhand on, unless it's not got much pace and bounces at least waist-high. Then I can cut the hell out of it... in effect, a backhand drop shot that really pisses people off. I'm also hell for opponents at the net in doubles, since I'm 6'3" and have looooong arms and quick hands... I could poach a lot, and catch a lot of shots that were intended to be passing shots.

Soccer was much the same. If I had to run half the length of the field, dribbling and/or passing, and then take a shot, I'd be lucky if it didn't end up behind me. Feed me a shot where I want it, though, and I could curl it either direction (*and* up or down) with either foot.

My greatest skills as a soccer/tennis coach involved those types of things in a practice setting, and in watching both my players and the opponents during matches, and guiding my players to take advantage of their strengths against the weaknesses of the opposition. We beat a lot of players and teams with better technical skills simply because we had better strategies to cope with those skills and maximize our own.

My greatest pleasure as a coach, though, was not winning per se. It was seeing my players grow, both as athletes and as human beings. That's why I much preferred coaching adolescents over adults. I could make more of a difference in their lives. One thing I always told my players - and meant - was that I didn't care what they did as individuals, stats-wise. What I cared about was that they performed as part of the team, because it was a team sport, and the team won or lost, not the individual. If I couldn't teach them anything else (and some of my players were superb athletes that I could offer next to nothing in terms of physical skills), I wanted to teach them that if you play on a team, only what happens to the team is important. Personal accomplishments are nice, but if they don't contribute to the team's accomplishments... <shrug> who cares? When I saw a strong player get her head out of her egotistical ass and voluntarily start helping weaker players improve their skills, for the sake of the team... that's when I knew I had succeeded with that player.