From Excusative to Appreciative

I'd like to share with you two of my experiences this week, as I plied my "trade" as a cricket coach working with children.

The first took place at my cricket club's ground on Monday, where we staged a Kwik Cricket Festival for Year 4 children - which equates to those aged under nine on 1st September last year. We have a large ground and there were almost 200 children attending, playing Kwik Cricket on 9 pitches around the field of play.

Excusative

Ours is a private ground - yet when the gate is open (and even when it is not) the local public seem to think and feel that it is their ground and that they can do whatever they like on it. On this eventful day the sense of Public Right was firmly held, as usual, by the dog walkers of our part of Barnstaple. These people come, sometimes in cars sometimes on foot, sometimes alone and with one dog or sometimes in groups with many dogs.
Today's story involves a lady, probably in her early 60's, with her lone pooch. She observes the 200 or so children playing cricket, as they cannot be missed, yet she still lets her dog off the lead and walks him (or her) around the perimeter. At some point on this promenade she nears some unattended rucksacks belonging to the children - yet poochie is there long before her because poochie is not on a lead. And because poochie is a dog, and does dog behaviours, part of a child's lunch from one of the rucksacks is joyfully eaten, cling film wrapper and all.

When the schools event organiser confronts the lady pointing out the dog's theft, the lady dutifully puts the lead back on the dog, with some feeble and unconvincing apologies for her dog's behaviour. The event organiser brings lady and her dog to me - as I am the club official present who can tell her about club policy.
"This club is private ground," I say.
"No it isn't - it belongs to the Council," comes the barked reply - from lady, not dog I must add.
"It is PRIVATE," I reply raising my voice a tad. "Plus, I would have thought it was sheer common sense to keep your dog on a lead when you come onto private ground where there is a children's event going on."
"Well I'm SORRY," she barks again, "But you should have notices telling people what to do."
"Look, we aren't going to spend hundreds of pounds on notices so that people like you don't read them because you think you can do what you like. I'm amazed at your lack of common sense. None of this would have happened if you'd kept your dog on a lead - now a child goes without the lunch their Mum has lovingly prepared." By this time I was actually making eye contact with this woman - and I am quite good at laser-eyed eye contact.

Fortunately for both of us our Club Treasurer arrived and put the woman right about the ownership of the ground, the wrongness of walking an un-leaded dog through a field where 200 children are in the middle of a sporting day out, and the sheer arrogance of believing she was still in the right.
"Well I won't come here again," said the lady.
And so say all of us - Good Riddance to the Excusative Woman.


Appreciative

The next morning I am on an artificial grass court at a local secondary school, helping dispense more games of cricket to the youth of the town.
"Hello, Pete - are you doing cricket with us today?" comes the shout from thirty or so excited lads from Year 7, as they pour onto the play area for their P.E. lesson. When the sun is out and it is warm, there cannot be a child on earth (surely) who would rather not be out of the classroom. One of them even had his foot and ankle encased in a "moon boot" and was hobbling around on crutches. He, like the others, was determined to just have some fun in the sun - and both I and his P.E teacher were equally keen to oblige.

We split them into four teams and they each played two matches in the 45 minute lesson. It was fast paced, even manic at times, but was just what the lads wanted. No time to think - only do; plenty of cricketing action - plenty of fun; the games had winners and losers but nobody really cared about that.
"Thanks, that was brilliant!" said their P.E. teacher as we came off at the end of the lesson. He had no idea beforehand how adaptable cricket can be in terms of pumping up the levels of engaged enjoyment in a P.E. environment.

Pleasing for me as this comment was, from a fellow educator - my most rewarding experience came from the endless chorus from the boys as they all trooped back towards the main school buildings.
  "Thanks, Pete - that was great! See you next week!"


Conclusive Reflective

So why have I put these two experiences in juxtaposition?
There's a common thread of school children, play, outdoors, exercise, cricket, fresh air, hitting, running, catching, teamplay, organisation, education, joy and fun running through both stories. It is a wonderful example of how we as humans are, and can be, flourishing creatures.

Yet - the contrast for me is how the selfish, unthinking and endless excuse-making lady moves through the narrative like the "elephant on the pitch". The children - bless them - never even noticed the elephant walking with her dog off the lead. I suspect the child, who had part of his or her lunch nicked by the resourceful dog, never even noticed what had gone missing - for that child's mind was only really attending to other things! No, the only people who noticed the elephant were other adults.

You can bet that when the dog lady was at school that she was rather like the primary school children at the Cricket Festival, or the Year 7 lads at secondary school. If I'm right at guessing her age then she, like me, would have been inculcated through her childhood - both at home AND at school - about respecting people, property, common sense, and what is right and wrong.
So where, I ask you in whatever god's name her God has, did she morph from the carefree and caring young girl she was - into the person she had become and was evidenced to us as she visited our private cricket ground this week?

It is a very sad commentary on the world some of us have created for ourselves - witnessed by part of the lyrics from the song, "Cold Heart and Closed Mind" written by Nanci Griffith.

"... love is not in question when you're holding the answer
In your cold heart and your closed mind.
You've got a cold heart and a closed mind.
... like a hurricane I see that storm in your eyes.
One of these mornings when you're making your way
Just gonna wash you out with the tide."