The saddest I ever was after a birthday was when I got a tennis racket. My mom and I went to the tennis shop and since I wasn’t that great of a player my mom and I decided on the middle of the line racket, another sensible choice in a childhood of practicality. It was one of the first of the larger head rackets with an extra wide sweet spot for my troublesome aim. I thought it was great until the next day my cousin’s mom went to the same store and bought an even better racket.
I was devastated to the point my mom got my aunt to apologize to me. Over the years my family talks about that racket as a code for not getting what others have, of being slighted with someone with more money.
I thought about the racket over the years as well, but what I realized is what I should have thought about was my aunt. Her son, tall and agile, was a great athlete and she was just trying to get him the best for him to reach his potential. He once again would crush me in tennis matches; my lifetime winning percentage in that sport is about the same as a chair.
Still my mom would cheer me after points with phrases like “great effort” when my shots became close to coming in. For her tennis was the great social opportunity, and she was determined that I have a good backhand despite how many lessons it would take. Ultimately through no fault of the racket, she let me go on to a sport like running and my younger brother would be the one with the wonderful game and brilliant social life.
I thought about the racket again this week, when another dad sent me a picture of his son in a brand new Star Wars costume. The son is my eldest boy's best friend, and the two of them had been discussing the force, and Darth Vader for weeks on end. Mine has a sticker book with a legend and he determined to know every nook and cranny of the world as if he was a 40 year old on the internet. He asks me about who built the Death Star and is disappointed that most of the engineers don’t have names.
And so there it was a photo of his best friend in a Kylo Ren mask shown to my son. It was his personal tennis racket. My son now had a true want.
With my years of tennis training, I did something then that I was so unsuccessful as I was in the sport. I rallied. I decided that instead of buying a bigger Darth Vader costume, that my son I would work to build with what we have. My wife quickly came up with the idea of using a paper bag for the mask, I did my best to draw the outline of the helmet, and my son colored it in. He was so proud of the mask that he tried to scare his brother the new two days.
What I realized what I sometimes have to teach is the importance of working with a need. That my sons needs to know if you want to have something you need to go out and get it. My years of being bad at tennis filled me with a need to be good at some sport, which gave me the drive to run. The best private schools aren’t great at teaching hunger if they are working so hard to be nut free.
The masks we give our children shape them, protect them, and ultimately change them.
I thought about sending the photo of my son in his paper bag mask back to the other Dad. And then I realized that is something my aunt would have done. No need to cause a racket.
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