Five Stick Friday

Who wants to be a loser? No one. NO ONE! But as I sit here with my morning coffee, it’s clear that it has to become a part of the American Psyche. Learn to lose. Be a loser. Lose with grace, for goodness sakes.

My freshman year of High School, I couldn’t wait to get on the “field” with the Dalton High School Marching Band. The band was only a little more than a year removed from winning Desoto Nationals in Bradenton, Florida…and while there was no BOA circuit back then, Dalton was well known as being one of the highest profile marching bands in the Southeast if not the country.

So imagine my disappointment, my despair, my frustration, my angst when in my very first marching competition, we LOST! ( There will be a separate blog post someday about how we program high school kids about “winning” and “losing” because on this Fall night in 1977, Dalton High School finished 2nd overall out of 37 band programs. That’s not “losing” really…but by Dalton standards in 1977…it was a disaster to us).

On the busride home there were tears, there were excuses, there was anger…”The judges don’t know what they’re doing! If we’d gotten to go on last this wouldn’t have happened. They didn’t give us CREDIT for how hard our opener was versus (the winning band).”

We were shitty losers. Shitty.

But guess what…it only took that ride home from Rome, Georgia back to Dalton to finally internalize the truth…we got beat. By a better band. At least on that night they were. We lost. Learn from it. Move on. Grow from it. It’s worth noting we didn’t “lose” on the field again for my entire remaining years in high school after that. And in 1980 returned to Desoto Nationals in Bradenton…and won it again.

So you can imagine my amusement, disgust, anger, etc. when a political candidate just can’t say…”I lost”. It started with our former President, but has now become a virus eating through the political eco-sphere…

Don’t win? Cry foul. Claim it was rigged. Claim dead people voted. Act like a 5-year old. And then? Get a major media network to push the same ridiculous narrative for 2 years after you lost.

What are we teaching our children? That if they don’t succeed not to “try, try, again?” With course correction, dedication to a different outcome, and humility?

We’re teaching them to be suspended adolescents. To be that 13-year old baritone player riding home on the bus making excuses about losing…but forever. And ever. And ever.

It has to stop if we want to continue to enjoy having democratically elected leaders. And if you don’t want that? Well…I don’t know what to say.

Be a better loser. Teach your children to be better losers. Because once they understand how to lose with grace…they are now prepared to win the world.

Off my soapbox.