.::Rejected like Dikembe Mutombo used to do::.

I was never any good at sports. I mean, don't get me wrong - there have been plenty victims of my killer crossover in basketball, or my Madden-like play calling in sand football, and I can get by in soccer. What I mean to say is, while I'm athletic now, perhaps I've come a long way. You see, back in elementary school I was almost always picked last in basketball. Angella Carr would always embarrass me (I used to say it was because she was a Lefty but she was just better...much better). Lillian Welch would tackle me so hard in football I wouldn't want to play some times. A lot of this had to do with my personality. I was always a bit shy and never wanted to call attention to myself. Kind of like that one Japanese saying, "He who sticks out like a nail gets hammered down"...yeah, I guess for a long time I attempted to maintain my anonymity, at times for better, but almost always for worse.



Then I moved to a new city and had to insert myself into a completely different culture of students. Almost no one looked like me. The few that did all played basketball. And they were pretty good, so if you didn't have game then you didn't play - simple as that. Let's just say I played by myself for awhile. My jumpshot sucked. I wasn't quick. And in order to dribble I had to look down. Until one day, I happened to be playing a pickup game with a group of guys who were desperate for a 10th player. I was tired of playing by myself and so I needed to find my niche. One guy challenged me as he was driving to the hoop and I jumped and blocked his shot wayyyyyyyy out of bounds. All of my teamates patted me on the back and made fun of the other guy. It felt good. So I started blocking everyone's shot. I never actually shot the ball. I just blocked shots. A lot of them. I started playing with the guys who looked like me and blocked their shots too. (it probably helped that I was a foot taller than a good number of them) It felt so good to just reject people over and over and over. I was praised for my defense and frequently invited to play at lunchtime. I made friends and became popular and so on and so forth.



But for some reason I never felt comfortable working on other areas of my game until later on. It was so much easier and unassuming to just block shots instead. I thought about this just recently since I've been in Brasil. This came to mind as I began to think about my approach toward learning a new language. When I learned Spanish, I remember not feeling comfortable speaking in public unless I knew exactly what I wanted to say and how to say it with perfect grammar and annunciation - for fear of critique and...rejection. But I would always criticize people and correct them without conscience.



People say Portuguese is basically Spanish with a few differences and a lazy French accent. Not true. There are so many differences, it has been a lot more difficult than I imagined. However, I've changed my approach toward learning this language in hopes of realizing faster results. I just get out there and speak and fail and speak some more. I get corrected all of the time. But every now and then I'll hear a native speaker say, "Voce esta fallando muito bom..Legal!" - and this will make it all worth it. And then I'll get a little cocky and walk up to the bartender and oh so smoothly say, "Eu quero uma caipirinha." To which they'll respond, "Nao entende" (I don't understand) - which is extremely deflating, you have no idea. I'll say, CAIPIRINHA CAI PEE REEN YUHHHHH! And then I'll have to point to the menu and they'll say "Ahhh, voce quere uma CaipirEEEUUUUUNYAAHHHHH". The only difference here being a nasally almost obnoxious vocal intonation that actually, makes all the difference.



No longer am I blocking shots, so to speak. I'm getting my stuff rejected Dikembe Mutombo style almost every day and I love it because it's chizeling me to become that much better, that much quicker. I would suggest the same for anyone who is interested in learning something new; whether it be a foreign language or a musical instrument or anything else. A former supervisor of mine used to tell me, "Bobby, I don't mind if you make mistakes...I'd prefer that you didn't BUT if you do, make sure it's an aggressive one because then I'll know that you were at least trying."