I have been following several of the newer threads where posters have gone back and forth (or as my old Danish employer used to say 'forth and back'), at times being a bit 'snotty' with each other, perhaps a bit short-tempered, and some even downright rude. It seems to me that at times "we" have come a long way from helping fulfill the mission of the HSBBW (a site intended to help our sons advance to the next level) and we are failing to focus on how truly blessed we all are for having wonderful sons (most of the time) who have a God-given talent for playing a game that we all love.
Quite often, it seems, the order of priorities in our lives goes askew and we forget to be thankful for what we have. Instead we put our entire beings and energy into our individual sons' baseball identities, as though they were nothing more. We question coaches' decisions; we question the talent of other players who are on the field while our sons are riding the pine (or straddling the bullpen mound); we question the fairness of life for a baseball player ... when in fact we all know that life is not always going to be fair to us and/or our children and loved ones. Instead of teaching our sons how to deal with the adversities of the game, we bicker amongst ourselves trying to justify our own actions and/or validate our own replies to another's queries.
Well, in the past 24 hours I have read forum threads here and e-mails from close friends where life really hasn't treated people/children fairly ... on HSBBW we learn of a newborn (Lane) who is struggling for life and a father (Kenneth) who has been given a sad prognosis indeed; in my personal mail I have heard from two friends ... one whose beloved husband died suddenly last week at the age of 55, leaving her and their 3 sons devastated (she was a former poster on HSBBW and that is how I met her) and another whose son is dealing with the loss of a close friend to suicide and learned that my son's father-in-law has recently been diagnosed with colon cancer.
These stories, friends, are perfect examples of where life is NOT fair. Having our sons get pine splinters on their rumps, having confrontations (hostile or not) with high school coaches who are 'unfair' to our sons, having (in some cases) delusions of grandeur regarding the level of our sons' talents, even going so far as to see our sons have to deal with the loss of their dream ... something that does indeed cause them to grieve ... these things are so "not worth getting our undies in a knot over" that it is almost sad to see the intensity in which they are debated.
I know that I have been party to some of the less than noble comments in the past, and I indeed now find myself deleting posts soon after I have written them because they seem mean spirited and/or unnnecessary. If I can be so bold, the past 24 hours have been a real 'come-to-Jesus-meeting' for me and my conscience and I think that sometimes we could all use one of those to reconsider how we are treating our fellow parents, our coaches, and our fellow websters.
Thank you for taking the time to consider these thoughts.
Mary Ann Shappi
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