I headed off to an Olympic Women’s Football game with my son and his two oldest children today. It was Canada against Japan. Little did I know as I sat down in the midst of Japanese fans and threatened them with a thrashing by my beloved Canadian team that the Japanese team were number 1 in the world having won the World Championship in 2011. When they scored the first goal, I thought I’m scuppered now. Wisdom had us move at half time to another area of the stadium. Actually it wasn’t so much wisdom as a move to compensate for some earlier stupidity in the day.
What stupidity you say? Well, I was hoping you wouldn’t ask but now that you have here goes. Have you ever had those moments as a parent, spouse, friend or grandparent when someone says to you maybe you should do this and you wave it off? I put on jeans, socks and a shirt to go to the game. Bonnie suggested I wear shorts and a t-shirt. I wasn’t keen on the idea but she asked me to go outside where it was actually baking. So, I decided to take the woman’s advice and change, all the while wondering about an umbrella as it was overcast. She suggested an umbrella but I shrugged it off. Then as we were about to leave the kids’ house my daughter in law told the grandkids that they should find hats. Both my son and I said it wouldn’t be necessary after all they’re in the car and then in the stands with a roof covering over it. Not a problem!
Yeah, not a problem! We got there and it was a mile walk from the car park to the stadium for two little blonds without hats in the scorching sun. Still the stadium would have shade from the roof, nothing to worry about. We got into the stadium only to find that our seats as well placed as they were for viewing a game just happened to be in the most intensely direct sunshine within the whole stadium. We baked, feeling like sushi on the edge as the Japanese dominated the game. At one point Joel said he had to take his daughter out of the sun, as she was feeling sick. When he came back, I offered to buys some hats at the concession stands seeing this is the Olympics and all. I walked around the entire stadium only to find it had just one stall for souvenirs that had already sold all their hats. I found it at the north side of the grounds but continued on around to the west side to prove the fact that there was no other stand selling hats or souvenirs of any description. On the way back I ask the fellow at the stall if this was only the first day of the Olympics and they were sold out what were they going to do the rest of the two weeks? He shrugged his shoulders.
When I returned to the family I was hatless in Coventry. It was half time shortly after that at which point we thought we would wait till the game restarted to buy hotdogs for the kids, thereby avoiding the long queues. The game started and I looked for hotdogs while Joel took the kids back to the seats to watch the game. Guess what? No more hotdogs! They had sold them all and were out. When I told Joel, he said we could feed them crisps (chips) but we needed to move. We went to the shaded north end of the stands past the despicable dog less concessions and the more despicable hatless souvenir store run by someone who didn’t really care. After the game they restocked on hotdogs and the kids wolfed them down. They recovered from sunstroke during the second game of the evening sufficiently that we could take them home before half time. Sweden was killing South Africa at this point so it was fairly conclusive who was going to win.
So, why do we do it? Why do we listen to perfectly good, sound advice and then disregard it? I mean in this instance who knew that the concession stand would run out of hats. But we had already heard the wisdom, knew it would only take a minute to follow and yet chose to pass on it. Life’s full of experiences like this. We would be so much better off if we just took the advice and acted on it. But look at all the fun we would miss if we did. By the way it didn’t rain. (Bonnie just told me according to the news it was the hottest day of the year.)
(images courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
What stupidity you say? Well, I was hoping you wouldn’t ask but now that you have here goes. Have you ever had those moments as a parent, spouse, friend or grandparent when someone says to you maybe you should do this and you wave it off? I put on jeans, socks and a shirt to go to the game. Bonnie suggested I wear shorts and a t-shirt. I wasn’t keen on the idea but she asked me to go outside where it was actually baking. So, I decided to take the woman’s advice and change, all the while wondering about an umbrella as it was overcast. She suggested an umbrella but I shrugged it off. Then as we were about to leave the kids’ house my daughter in law told the grandkids that they should find hats. Both my son and I said it wouldn’t be necessary after all they’re in the car and then in the stands with a roof covering over it. Not a problem!
Yeah, not a problem! We got there and it was a mile walk from the car park to the stadium for two little blonds without hats in the scorching sun. Still the stadium would have shade from the roof, nothing to worry about. We got into the stadium only to find that our seats as well placed as they were for viewing a game just happened to be in the most intensely direct sunshine within the whole stadium. We baked, feeling like sushi on the edge as the Japanese dominated the game. At one point Joel said he had to take his daughter out of the sun, as she was feeling sick. When he came back, I offered to buys some hats at the concession stands seeing this is the Olympics and all. I walked around the entire stadium only to find it had just one stall for souvenirs that had already sold all their hats. I found it at the north side of the grounds but continued on around to the west side to prove the fact that there was no other stand selling hats or souvenirs of any description. On the way back I ask the fellow at the stall if this was only the first day of the Olympics and they were sold out what were they going to do the rest of the two weeks? He shrugged his shoulders.
When I returned to the family I was hatless in Coventry. It was half time shortly after that at which point we thought we would wait till the game restarted to buy hotdogs for the kids, thereby avoiding the long queues. The game started and I looked for hotdogs while Joel took the kids back to the seats to watch the game. Guess what? No more hotdogs! They had sold them all and were out. When I told Joel, he said we could feed them crisps (chips) but we needed to move. We went to the shaded north end of the stands past the despicable dog less concessions and the more despicable hatless souvenir store run by someone who didn’t really care. After the game they restocked on hotdogs and the kids wolfed them down. They recovered from sunstroke during the second game of the evening sufficiently that we could take them home before half time. Sweden was killing South Africa at this point so it was fairly conclusive who was going to win.
So, why do we do it? Why do we listen to perfectly good, sound advice and then disregard it? I mean in this instance who knew that the concession stand would run out of hats. But we had already heard the wisdom, knew it would only take a minute to follow and yet chose to pass on it. Life’s full of experiences like this. We would be so much better off if we just took the advice and acted on it. But look at all the fun we would miss if we did. By the way it didn’t rain. (Bonnie just told me according to the news it was the hottest day of the year.)
(images courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
RSS Feed