Another pastime I fall far short on that also requires good hand eye coordination is pool, or billiards as it is also sometimes called. With an engineering background, I understand very well the physics behind the game, angles, velocity, spin (“English” as it’s called) but there is a huge gap between my tacit understanding and successful execution. I love Mark Twain’s take on billiards.
I wonder why a man should prefer a good billiard-table to a poor one; and why he should prefer straight cues to crooked ones; and why he should prefer round balls to chipped ones; and why he should prefer a level table to one that slants; and why he should prefer responsive cushions to the dull and unresponsive kind.
I wonder at these things, because when we examine the matter we find that the essentials involved in billiards are as competently and exhaustively furnished by a bad billiard outfit as they are by the best one. One of the essentials is amusement.
Very well, if there is any more amusement to be gotten out of the one outfit than out of the other, the facts are in favor of the bad outfit. The bad outfit will always furnish thirty per cent more fun for the players and for the spectators than will the good outfit.
Another essential of the game is that the outfit shall give the players full opportunity to exercise their best skill and display it in a way to compel the admiration of the spectators. Very well, the bad outfit is nothing behind the good one in this regard. It is a difficult matter to estimate correctly the eccentricities of chipped balls and a slanting table, make the right allowance for them and secure a count; the finest kind of skill is required to accomplish the satisfactory result. Another essential of the game is that it shall add to the interest of the game by furnishing opportunities to bet.
Very well, in this regard no good outfit can claim any advantage over a bad one. I know, by experience, that a bad outfit is as valuable as the best one; that an outfit that couldn’t be sold at auction for seven dollars is just as valuable for all the essentials of the game as an outfit that is worth a thousand. … Last winter, here in New York, I saw Hoppe and Schaefer and Sutton and the three or four other billiard champions of world-wide fame contend against each other, and certainly the art and science displayed were a wonder to see; yet I saw nothing there in the way of science and art that was more wonderful than shots which I had seen Texas Tom make on the wavy surface of that poor old wreck in the perishing saloon at Jackass Gulch forty years before. – Mark Twain’s Autobiography, Chapters from the North American Review, November 1907
No Team Sports for Me
My Mom was a capable athlete when she was a young girl. Somewhere in “the storage” there is a medal she won for first place in running hurdles when she was in high school. So, she naturally encouraged me when I showed interest in gymnastics. She was quite proud when I won a certificate of accomplishment from the US Marine Corp for fitness and gymnastics in high school. I competed in events on the pommel horse, the parallel bars and the high bar. No hand-eye coordination required for these events, only good upper body strength and timing.
She also encouraged me in swimming and diving including diving from the high board. In fact, when we took our second trip to Florida when I was about ten or eleven years old she arranged diving lessons for me from the high board at the Fontainebleau hotel where we stayed in Miami Beach.
Later she encouraged me to take a course at the Olympic Park swimming pool near our home to qualify as a lifeguard which I completed and became what was then known as a junior lifeguard. This was a lifeguard for the kid’s pool since to be a lifeguard at the adult pool required you to be at least eighteen years old whereas I was only fourteen at that time. The skills required, however, were the same for both junior and senior lifeguards. I took the training and carried out the junior lifeguard responsibilities with Dennis, my childhood friend and next-door neighbor. We both did junior lifeguard duty for two years. We weren’t paid but had free admission to the pool for the day.
As time passed I did less and less schoolwork, less and less homework and became lazier and lazier. This freed up a lot of time to pursue a wide range of interests that significantly advanced my general education but didn’t do much for my academic performance. I perfected the skill of doing the absolute minimum to slide through with just barely passing grades. Later in college I had a vague sense that I might have a really good memory. I would have said a photographic memory, but that might be a stretch. I found I could vividly recall images from memory and remember them after only a few brief instances of exposure.
According to my research recent studies indicate a photographic memory really doesn’t exist. It’s now considered only a popular myth. There is new term used to describe the ability, eidetic memory and the eidetic memory has allegedly been scientifically validated. According to the new definition, eidetic memory is the ability to vividly recall images from memory and remember them after only a few brief instances of exposure. Gee, I thought that was a photographic memory. Well whatever. With a well-developed reading ability and really good memory I successfully used the combination to just meet the minimum academic standards without wasting a lot of time on studying and homework. I followed Mark Twain’s advice.
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” –Mark Twain
In high school, tenth, eleventh and twelfth grade, there were four marking periods or semesters plus a final exam, each of which counted one fifth of the final grade for the year. The grades were based on A, B, C, D and F. Each semester I did just enough in each course to get a C or a D. For instance, for four semesters I would have two C’s and two D’s. Therefore, entering the final exam I would have a C minus average needing at least a C on the final exam to pass for the school year. I would study diligently, cram for the final exam, and nearly always “ace” it (but a few times I slipped up and only achieved a B on the final which was still sufficient to pass for the year). This method freed up a lot of spare time to screw around, smoking cigarettes, racing cars, chasing girls, getting into all kinds of other mischief.
Of course, over the four semesters my grades were marginal at best and since we were required to bring the report card home each semester to be signed by at least one parent I would always be in trouble. Especially with my Dad. And the remarks column written by my teachers would always tell a sordid tale; “doesn’t pay attention, doesn’t turn in homework, fools around, wastes time in class, etc., etc.” To avoid this unpleasant event, sometime after the first semester of the twelfth grade I hatched the following scheme. Instead of bringing the signed report card back to school I told the teacher I lost it and they issued me a new report card. I still had the original however and for the following three semesters I gave myself grades that I thought were more appropriate. I didn’t get carried away. I issued myself mostly C’s and an occasional B. On the subsequent semesters I had friends, reproduce, in their handwriting, the original comments from the first semester and new comments that I devised for the current semesters along the lines of, “Harold is making excellent progress, much improved this semester, etc.” All went well until the final semester. I arrived home from school one day, and since I was in jeopardy of failing for the year, unbeknownst to me, the school, sent a letter home by mail that stated, “We regret to inform you that your son is in jeopardy of failing his senior year and may have to attend summer school to graduate”. Well, my Mom was livid and she coerced me into revealing the whole scheme. Her response was “Wait till you father gets home”.
When Dad got home from work Mom explained what happened and he turned to me and asked, “So, I have to sign the report card each semester, who signs the one that is turned back into the school?” I answered, I do. He then asked, “Whose name do you sign?” I said yours. The proverbial shit then hit the proverbial fan. His response was “Holly Christ, I better not look in the bank, my account is probably empty”. The later part of the last semester was a bitch, I was grounded and all that stuff, but I knew I had the school situation under control. I’d been doing this a long time and had this thing covered. I studied for the exams as usual, aced them all, passed the semester and graduated with the rest of the class with an overall C average.
I read somewhere years later the most creative people are inherently smart and inherently lazy. Since they’re lazy they always look for the easy way to do things and since they’re smart they nearly always figure out a clever way to do it. Properly channeled this can be a great asset. Improperly channeled it often leads to criminal behavior. Fortunately, later I learned to channel it properly. Although I guess it was a tossup there for a while. However, just for the record I never did “hack” my Fathers bank account. Some might call this sort of behavior devious. But I prefer to refer to it as creative.
“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” Bill Gates
Long Story Short: A Collection of Stories by Hal Gunardson 