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They might consider it to be revolting.
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In retrospect, there was a time when I first became interested in (American gridiron) football, I wanted to be a wide receiver for the NFL (US National Football League) once I grew up. I learned that various football players specialize in their preferred positions largely based on physique or build, and I was definitely not destined to weigh 240 to 300 pounds and become a lineman, but I certainly had the runner’s body and speed to carry the ball across goal lines. Being about 6 years old at the time, I didn’t realize all the steps necessary to make that dream a possibility. I never played football beyond the front yards on our block along with my equally unprepared brothers and some boys from the neighborhood. I never joined any organized teams or leagues, I never practiced the sport, I did absolutely nothing that would lead me to the NFL. In school, I was a bookworm from preschool to the twelfth grade, I didn’t join teams there either. My fleeting dream of my name in lights for my on-field highlights was dashed with a couple of years of its inception.
Right about the same time of the football vision, Arthur Ashe rose to fame in the tennis world, and many inner-city minority children were truly inspired to play the sport themselves. The opportunities to do so were hard to come by, especially due to the cost. A recreation center all the way across town began offering tennis lessons to “underprivileged youths”, there was a registration fee and equipment fee. They hired the best instructors they could so that the classes could be a serious effort to turn out good tennis players, so the program was geared toward kids who were really serious about doing well. That meant that all costs for the entire season had to be paid in advance to stave off those kids who might lose interest and drop out. I was burning to go; I wanted to be the world’s next Arthur Ashe. Alas, it was not to be, my family couldn’t afford the three payouts, registration, equipment, and public transportation (there were no monthly bus passes nor student discount bus passes back then where I lived). I could not go.
Now when we talk about The Grammar Olympic Games . . .
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Is your point to rebut my post? I didn’t state that a raquet is or is not cheap, I stated that the final analysis was that we couldn’t afford the cumulative costs.
We couldn’t afford the cumulative costs.
You keep insisting and keep insisting. I am not nor have I recounted anyone else’s experience on this topic. I do not know what other people experienced, so I cannot comment on them or on it. Furthermore, this happened when I was a small child, I can’t even remember how old I was, I may have been as young as 8, but either way, I had no control over the situation. There were factors at hand that prevented it from happening for me, and whether or not I know all of them, whether or not I extolled all of them here, whether or not I pine on it half a century later, there is no force on earth that will or can or could change what had already taken place. I am far beyond the age to today take advantage of a children’s program that most likely doesn’t even exist any longer, I no longer live in that city nor in that state, there is no possibility nor probability that it’s even relevant to look into it today with any chance that it will make a difference, any chance that it will have a different outcome than has already transpired. You providing examples of what other people did will not change my past. You continually beat this dead horse and I don’t know what point you’re trying to get me to make for you or what supposed agreement from me you are seeking. I have clearly stated what I have to state and I have reiterated the bottom line. You have made your point again and again, and it has absolutely nothing to do with what happened with me personally. You do not have the power or ability to change the past in general, and especially not my past specifically. No amount of browbeating or pleading or presentation of other experiences will get you a different or better or acquiesced response from me. Had I wanted to remark on what happened with other people, that’s what I would have written. I am quite capable of expressing myself in clear and unequivocal ways if and when that is my intent. If you choose to display how other people did what they did, that is both your right and your prerogative, it has nothing to do with me deciding what I want to write. If and when you show that you want to continue here along the same path you have chosen so far, fine, please understand beforehand that my message is a quite simple one and will not waver: we couldn’t afford the cumulative costs.
Other people who love the game of cricket are good at playing it, so why not you?
Kittigate 