Unit 7

Text A

Pre-reading Activities

Before you listen to the passage
1. Take a minute with a partner to match the sports in Column A with the playing areas in Column B. Then in Column C, list all the things (equipment, special clothing, etc.) that are necessary to each of the sports.
Column A
baseball
bowling
golf
running
soccer (football)
tennis
Column B
alley
course
court
diamond
field (pitch)
track
Column C
_____
_____
_____
_____
_____
_____

Now listen to the passage
2. Which sport is it about? Compare your equipment list with the equipment mentioned on the tape. What attracts you to the activities that you enjoy in your spare time? How important is it to you to "do them right"?

So What's So Bad About Being So-So?

Lisa Wilson Strick

The other afternoon I was playing the piano when my seven-year-old walked in. He stopped and listened for a while, then said: "You don't play that thing very well, do you, Mom?"
No, I don't. My performance would make any serious music student weep, but I don't care. I've enjoyed playing the piano badly for years.
I also enjoy singing badly and drawing badly. I'm not ashamed of my incompetence in these areas. I do one or two other things well and that should be enough for anybody. But it gets boring doing the same things over and over. Every now and then it's fun to try something new.
Unfortunately, doing things badly has gone out of style. It used to be a mark of class if a lady or a gentleman sang a little, painted a little, played the violin a little. You didn't have to be good at it; the point was to be fortunate enough to have the leisure time for such pursuits. But in today's competitive world we have to be "experts" even in our hobbies.
You can't tone up your body by pulling on your gym shoes and jogging around the block a couple of times anymore. Why? Because you'll be laughed off the street by the "serious runners" — the ones who run twenty miles or more a week in their sixty-dollar running suits and fancy shoes. The shoes are really a big deal. If you say you're thinking about taking up almost any sport, the first thing the "serious" types will ask is what you plan to do about shoes. Leather or canvas? What type of soles? Which brand? This is not the time to mention that the gym shoes you wore in high school are still in pretty good shape. As far as sports enthusiasts are concerned, if you don't have the latest shoes you are hopelessly committed to embarrassing yourself.
The runners aren't nearly so snobbish as the dancers, however. In case you didn't know, "going dancing" no longer means putting on a pretty dress and doing a few turns around the dance floor with your favorite man on Saturday night. "Dancing" means squeezing into tights and leg warmers, then sweating through six hours of warm-ups, five hours of ballet and four hours of jazz classes. Every week. Never tell anyone that you "like to dance" unless this is the sort of activity you enjoy.
Have you noticed what this is doing to our children? "We don't want that nerd on our soccer team," I overheard a ten-year-old complain the other day. "He doesn't know a goal kick from a head shot." As it happens, the "nerd" that the boy was talking about was my son, who did not — like some of his friends — start soccer instruction at age three. I'm sorry, Son, I guess I blew it. In my day, when we played baseball, we expected to give a little instruction to the younger kids who didn't know how to play. It didn't matter if they were terrible; we weren't out to slaughter the other team. Sometimes we didn't even keep score. To us, sports were just a way of having a good time.
I don't think kids have as much fun as they used to. Competition keeps getting in the way. The daughter of a neighbor is a nervous wreck worrying about getting into the best tennis school. "I was a late starter," she told me, "and I only get to practice five or six hours a week, so my technique may not be up to their standards." The child is nine. She doesn't want to be a tennis player when she grows up; she wants to be a nurse. I asked what she likes to do for fun in her free time. She seemed to think it was an odd question. "Well, I don't actually have a lot of free time," she said. "Homework and tennis and piano lessons kind of eat it all up. I have piano lessons three times a week now, so I have a good shot at getting into the all-state orchestra."
Ambition, drive and the desire to excel are all great within limits, but I don't know where the limits are anymore. I know a woman who's been complaining for years that she hasn't got the time to study a foreign language. I've pointed out that an evening course in French or Italian would take only a couple of hours a week, but she keeps putting it off. I suspect that what she hasn't got the time for is to become completely fluent within one year — and that any lower level of accomplishment would embarrass her. Instead she spends her evenings watching TV and tidying up her closets — occupations at which no particular expertise is expected.
I know lots of other people, too, who avoid activities they might enjoy because they lack the time or the energy to tackle them "seriously." It strikes me as so silly. We are talking about recreation. I have nothing against self-improvement. But when I hear a teenager muttering "practice makes perfect" as he grimly makes his four-hundred-and-twenty-seventh try at hooking the basketball into the net left-handed, I wonder if some of us aren't improving ourselves right into the insane asylum.
I think it's time we put a stop to all this. For sanity's sake, each of us should vow to take up something new this week — and to make sure we never master it completely. Sing along with grand opera. Make peculiar-looking objects out of clay. I can tell you from experience that a homemade cake still tastes pretty good even if it doesn't look perfect. The point is to enjoy being a beginner again; to rediscover the joy of creative fooling around. If you find it difficult, ask any two-year-old to teach you. Two-year-olds have a gift for tackling the impossible with enthusiasm; repeated failure hardly discourages them at all.
As for me, I'm getting a little out of shape, so I'm looking into golf. A lot of people I know enjoy it, and it doesn't look too hard. Given a couple of lessons, I should be stumbling gracelessly around the golf course and playing badly in no time at all.
(1,050 words)
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