Wednesday, June 2, 2004

Collitch Kids

Answer:  Can I get back to you on that?  Question:  Do our young people give us hope for the future?

A couple of days ago Mrs. Linklater was having a conversation about sports with a young man who was transferring from his current school to Indiana University. IU is where Bobby Knight threw the folding chair across the basketball court. More importantly, IU was ranked the number one party school in the entire country a couple of years ago. Go Hoosiers Go!!

Anyway, the previously mentioned young man talked about wanting to play football. Wanting to study was not mentioned. Nor was wanting to get an education. At least this kid's got his priorities straight. At the same time, he also knew he was too small to play football for a Division I school.  Only 6', 185 lbs.  Heck, Mrs. Linklater is bigger than he is.

"So play golf, tennis, baseball -- there's a million sports that won't leave you crippled for the rest of your life."

Uh-oh. She realized she was lecturing, but, like a baby running down hill, she couldn't stop herself.

Having played a jillion sports herself -- pretty much everything BUT football -- Mrs. Linklater, now in her dotage, takes longer to get out of bed than most people take to drive to work. She is a poster child for playing too many sports too often and now has too few body parts left for things like walking. So she tries to encourage those who aren't cartilege impaired to think about the future. To no avail, of course.

Mrs. Linklater realizes that warning a perfectly healthy young person about what his or her life will be like thirty years from now, filled with Celebrex, chiropractors and ThermaCare, is pretty much a waste of everybody's time. But she's is blessed with short term memory loss and. . .what was she saying?

"So, who are you. . .Yoda?" he said, smiling.

Mrs. Linklater laughed at the reference to everyone's favorite small, googly-eyed, pointy-eared, greenish gray, bald creature with the voice of Frank Oz.. 

"Mrs. Yoda to you."

Hm-m-m. What has Frank Oz been doing since Yoda, she wondered to herself. Just the day before, she'd had a chance to see some of the early footage from Episode III and thought it looked pretty good. All the loose ends were going to be tied up: Why Obi Wan Kenobi became a hermit living in the desert.  Why Darth Vader went to the dark side.  Why Luke and Princess Leia were raised on different planets. Questions that have kept us on our tippy toes since 1977.

Lost in her Star Wars reverie, she was absolutely not prepared for his next remark.

"You DO know who Yoda is, don't you?"

Mrs. Linklater stared at IU boy in disbelief.

"Sure, Yoda Berra, he played for the Yankees."

 

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