WIN SOME, LOOSE SOME -- REMEMBER 'EM ALL

You know, ours is a very strange life. I have two thoughts today. One old one and one new one.  This is the old one and I am visiting it because it has been there for over a year now. Not only that, the new one is a real strange one and it is really challenging.  Nerdy challenging...geeky stuff.  So geeky that there is no picture for it, I am sure.  So I will have to wait for the thought that will come to rescue me from the depths of a thought that can't be pictured.  Go ahead, turn that over in your head for a while and you'll see why I am starting with playground swings.  Now that you can picture.  Assuming of course that you lived somewhere in the vicinity of a playground that had swings.  Yeah, we had them where I grew up.  When I was older they disappeared.  Someone told me it was because there was not enough money to pay for the liability insurance needed to protect the town from the parental lawsuits.  Maybe.  I can't relate to that because when I grew up in that town all we cared about was who was going to be coming back from Europe and/or Asia, not too much about who fell off the swings at the playround yesterday. Now you know how old I am.
Notice that the little boy above is just sitting there.  We can't really tell whether or not he is dejected because the swing is not flying for him like it does for the older boys.  He seems to look forlorn, and I don't blame him.  That happened to me a lot.  Learning how to keep the swing flying after getting an initial push was a rather long and trying process for me.  (Retart!)  After I was able to keep it flying, it took me about three or four semesters at the playround MIT lab before success at starting from a stop became mine.  Along the way I had built a great reputation as the fat little kid who couldn't even fly a swing.  Man, I tell you, I was stupid...no, really stupid.

Now, I wasn't a girl, but I can tell you that I looked like this a lot in one of the worst Summers of my life.  How many mornings I would leave the house early and walk the 1/3 of a mile or so to the playground where I would be alone and I would grunt, and cry, and scream, throw sand, anything but be smart enough to get that sadistic machine to do for me what it did for every other creature on the planet.  That was the Summer when the older boys refused to give me the initial push.  Even friend "Red" J... (he's no longer around) told me to learn on my own.  Now that really raised the hackles of the back of my neck.  It was so bad, it weakened me and went home crying.
In case you're wondering: No, there is no happy ending to this story.  It took me at least three more weeks of  frustrating leg flailing before I discovered the full body, fulcrum-based harmony that was necessary to get the inertia to break and take to the air.  I never did get much accomplished that Summer, but at least I did have the body memory that I needed to have great fun the following year.  I haven't forgotten it, but I sure don't waste any time thinking about it because it reminds of just how stupid I can be.  That's why it took 5 years before telling the story here.