WINNING

Daydreaming on the bus. A dangerous pursuit. You can miss your stop that way. Believe me! I know this firsthand. But bus-seat daydreaming can lead to true profundity.
I was lost in thought when a persistent tapping on my arm finally roused me. It was not—after all a passenger squeezing past in the crowd. It was one of my favourite 20-something guys. He’s just started a new job.
“How did it go yesterday?” I asked.
“Not that well,” he said. I was already firmly on the path of compassionate responses and firm reassurances by the time I realized he was not talking about his job. He was talking about the high school soccer game he coached last night.
“We were only down 2 to nothing at the half,” he said. And then, I’d say, though he didn’t use this language, they lost heart. “The last half was 45 minutes,” he said. It seemed like 4 hours.”
My hopey little mind was warmed up and getting ready to call the plays from the bench. I was thinking about the tragedies that ensue when people lose heart. He was telling me how everybody was blaming everybody else for the loss.
“Perhaps,” I advised, trying to sound gentle, “perhaps you’ll need to gather them in the locker room and tell them inspirational stories about underdog teams that didn’t have a chance, but then they scraped their way to victory by supporting each other and pulling it all together.”
I was struggling to recall various movies I’ve seen about hockey teams, basketball teams, soccer teams. They’re basically all the same. Most of them end with the statement that they are based on a true story. You don’t really need to see them to know how they’ll turn out—so predictable is the result. But you watch them because you want to. They give you hope. I wanted to suggest some titles.
He must have noticed that glazed hopey look in my eyes. He must have been wishing he’d told me about his work day instead of his soccer evening. “I don’t think that’s what we need,” he said patiently. “They’ve heard every kind of locker room speech before.”
But I was just getting warmed up. I was thinking about goal-setting and how difficult it is for underdogs. I was reflecting on the emotional power of hope, and how it transcends statistics and probabilities. I was imagining is team—transformed by his words—practicing late into the night, pulling out the final play-off game at the last possible second. It’s not that easy to get the attention of a person who is in this state.
He, in turns out, wasn’t really trying to get my attention. He was replaying last night’s game in his thoughts. “What we need,” he said, breaking into my imagining happy ending, is for me to tell them what they did wrong and how they can do it differently.”
It’s a short bus ride. I suspect he wasn’t all that sad to see that we were pulling into my stop at City Hall. We were about halfway down the length of the bus. “There are five people standing between you and the door,” he said helpfully.
I got to my feet, opened up my white cane. “Stay to the left,” he instructed as I stepped forward. “Now over to the right. Okay, back to the left and go round one more.”
I was out the door in a second. That guy had executed a perfect play. Satellite technology couldn’t have done a better job of getting me through the maze. So I guess he knows his stuff, but I still think he ought to give an inspirational speech, raise their hope, give them a vision and then bring in the skill.