Yesterday at school, my daughter Kaye took part in a relay swim meet. She was on the team representing her year and program (the music specialty program, first year students). The girls in her team were strong swimmers and knew they had a very good shot at winning, especially with Kaye on their team.
If they won, they would then be slated to race for the finals today at the school's special event. Unfortunately, a few of the girls on Kaye's team were already slotted to perform today (the music specialty kids often have special programs) and didn't want to go through the hassle of changing and getting their instruments and all that.
So . . . clever high school braniacs that they be, they came up with the plan of purposefully losing . . . yes, they would throw the race. Obviously, many parents reading this would not be particularly thrilled to hear their child had chosen to throw a race because she was too lazy to do more than one scheduled event on a day that the kids consider a "fun fair free-for-all" sort of thing.
Well . . . the race began . . . and the kids' plan to fail was going along swimmingly as they were losing at a good margin. Unfortunately, it was then Kaye's turn to get into the water . . . having agreed to the failsafe failure plan, she dove into the water with complete commitment to swim unerringly into losing. She pulled back on her strokes and was barely moving, slowly paddling along . . . or so she thought . . . as she neared the finish line, she heard her teammates shouting at her in panic, "slow down, slow down, you're swimming too fast!"
Kaye had the sensation that she was swimming very slowly . . . but, what she didn't understand was that what felt like slow to her was actually a rather fast pace as she had accidentally put herself into the point where she almost won the race.
So, what does my clever daughter do as she nears the finish line?
She floats there . . . suspended in the water . . . and waits for the other teams to catch up and touch the edge . . . then, when she is assured of losing, she floats on up to the finish line and loses to the joy and rapture of her teammates and the confusion of her opponents. Her team came in second-to-last and happily took their loss with smiles as they were then spared the honor of competing again today.
Honestly, I told Kaye that I didn't know if I should be upset with her or proud as I am very much disappointed that she would "cheat" to lose (yes, throwing a race is indeed cheating) but I'm rather proud of her that what was "slow" and "holding back" to her was pretty speedy swimming to everyone else.
Oh . . . the senior girls for the music program won and so will be competing today . . . as well as performing . . . something they hadn't thought of until after their victory. The boys team in Kaye's year also got second-to-last, same as the girls, but unlike the girls the boys had to fight tooth and nail to achieve that level of accomplishment.
Go figure.
All the best,
Brian
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Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [brian@briandavidphillips.com]
Hypnotist, Hypnotherapist, Intuitionist, Trance Wizard
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan
