Aswan on Sun Dec 19, 2010 5:23 pm
Generally, there is no particular advantage at starting on a Big 4 club at an early age. If you are convinced that your player will develop into a top echelon athlete however, starting and staying with a top team will spare you the anxiety and trauma of switching teams later down the road. Unfortunately, the hopeful parent is confronted with the inconvenient fact that the first step in the making of a good athlete begins with nature’s chromosomal crapshoot, a game of chance that is largely beyond his control. After that first roll in the hay, the father is relegated in this game of chance to status of spectator in the nose bleed section of Madison Square Garden. Get two dice together, throw a few kisses, blow a little hot air, and the die are cast. One roll and you get snake eyes. An imperceptible cosmic twist of the wrist and, viola, you’re Angelina Jolie. And, as unjust as it may be, life will be kinder to Angelina than someone with snake eyes. Further, the ultimate outcome of the infinite intersections of genetic material will not be discernable for many years. So we parents are condemned to wait for years, like anxious prepubescent girls wondering if they will be endowed with boobs, to find out if Junior will be a Division I quarterback or second chair oboe in the marching band. Still, it would take a remarkably detached parent not to search for signs of burgeoning athletic potential in his young son. Given the spasmodic growth and development of young lads, however, this is largely a fruitless endeavor. I’ve seen particularly enmeshed fathers recognizing signs of Olympic athletic ability in pamper-laden toddlers. For myself, however, I have found that the ability to do a bipedal lurch and stagger at eight months is a poor indicator of eventual athletic achievement.
Still, I cannot not help wondering which of my ancestors will be reincarnated in the face of my child. I try to avoid such musings as they contribute to an anxious disposition but cannot resist. Who among us does not have a batty aunt or a gnome-like uncle poking out from the ancestral tree like a gnarled limb, a limb that reminds us of possible capricious turns of fate? Even the more palatable contributors to my genetic estuary may cause for some distraction. In occasional restless early morning hours I confront the possibility that my son will mature to be a head twisting tree stump of a man like his great grandfather. In moments such as these, the peculiarities and aberrations of my forbearers give me pause. Contemplation of the infinite possible permutations in the genetic soup is the stuff from which insomnia is made. In the face of the unknowable, just find a place in which your player fits at the time, sit back and let things unfold.
