Poor little fellah. Every time you watch it, it gets worse (funnier?)
The windup in this .gif is intense, much more so than the actual ‘event’ itself. Sometimes, I think that I’m very similar to Mr. Red-Underwear, and not just in the way I approach writing. Kicking that ball is a big deal. He really, really wants it to work out. And what happens, besides pure hilarity?
Well, he ends up on his butt.
This can happen to adults. We hold expectations of ourselves that we import from stuff like TV, conversations, role models and the like. And if we think about them too long or too hard, we end up on our butts, too.
I’m not saying that if the prep had been shorter captain underpants would have kicked the ball–that’s probably just comes down to lack of foot-eye-coordination–but this is a great analog for life. If you’re poised on the edge of something you want to start, kick the ball. Maybe it’s writing, maybe it’s knitting, maybe it’s learning an instrument. It’s easy to overanalyze and overthink–it’s the ‘adult’ thing to do. But what makes kids such great learners (of languages, of culture, you know) is that they don’t expect to be great on the first outing, and they’re not self-reflective when they make a mistake. I’m sure that if we had the next eight seconds of video, that kid would get up and try again.
So do yourself a favor: Get out of your own way and just kick the damn ball.
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