I WENT OUT FOR BREAKFAST this morning, to a local restaurant. The place was empty except for me, and after a while, a couple of guys who took a table nearby.
They talked loudly, which didn't bother me, but made me a witness to their conversation.
They were coaches: soccer, I think.
They complained long and loudly about the quality of the kids—middle school kids—that they had to work with. They also were disgusted with the lack of "dedication" they observed in parents.
One example will make the entire tenor of their conversation clear.
One of them had recently kicked a kid off the team. The offense, and you will just have to take my word that I am not minimizing his own report here, was that he had spoken to the kid during a practice, and the kid hadn't heard him. He was apparently distracted by something else that was happening on the field and had momentarily let his focus drift from the coach.
The coach interpreted this to mean that the kid wasn't "really interested in playing" and had kicked him off the team. The kid's parent had approached the coach later explained that the boy had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, and asked that he be given a second chance.
This outraged the coach, who told his friend in the restaurant, "I only needed the kid's attention for ten seconds! I'm trying to put a winning team together!"
I admit that my irritation with this conversation has many deep roots: from having coaches twist my arm to give away grades to their star players when I was a high school math teacher, to the appalling ignorance this particular coach exhibited about ADHD.
But the deeper impression this exchange made on me had to do with the immaturity it exhibited.
These coaches had been put in charge of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, for the purpose of giving them an experience of a team sport. Their role, as coaches of a kid's team, was essentially the role of educators.
But they were so caught up in a game of pretending to be coaches of a professional team that they completely forgot their role as teachers. Their responsibility to the kids had been swallowed up by their fantasy life.
On another day this would not have led to a post. I would have fumed a bit, shrugged my shoulders, and moved on.
But the last week or two on the national scene has made a parallel impression on me. From Hillary's appearance before congress, to Obama's speeches and press conferences, I've been surprised, time and again, by the sudden realization that after eight long years we have grown-ups in charge again.
The Bush administration, in retrospect, strikes me as being very much like those two coaches: more interested in appearing to do the job (even to themselves) than they were in really doing it. They lived in a sort of fantasy world.
But now we have adults in place. I'm already aware that I don't agree with everything they plan to do, or how they plan to do it. But I have no doubt that whatever they do will be handled with maturity and competence.
And I have no fear that they will ignore or disparage the issues of the people they are trying to serve.
Competence is a wonderful thing.
At least, that's what I think today.
