Last Sunday Francois Moser and I played a few rounds of pétanque against Mireille Di Maio and William Lavelle.
Mireille’s pointing accuracy was uncanny; most of her shots landed on or a few inches away from the cochonnet. Useless to say that they literally trounced us in the first game. We managed to win the second game and lost the third game on the finish line.
Coming from a young adult, I would find Mireille’s pointing perfection annoying but normal; but (with all due respect) she is an octogenarian. According to the laws of nature, she should not be playing that well anymore.
Granted, she has been practicing for a very long time, but it is not the experience that counts; it is the person’s natural ability, and Mireille has it. Kudos then to Mireille and her achievements, and wishing her many more years of great pétanque…
William by the way also played extremely well.
Now, as you might have noticed, I like to give credit to individuals when they deserved it. But sometimes I feel that I have to update my original assessment.
Last year I gave a ringing endorsement to Wyatt (as she likes to be called) and she deserved it. I still say that she was the MIP (Most Improved Player) of 2017, but in 2018 she is quickly accumulating points to snag the MAP award: the Most Annoying Player of the year.
We all realize that she is handicapped, but even a disabled person should pay close attention to the game and abide by its rules. Susan does not seem to think so. She is a strong-willed individual who aspires to play only by her own rules.
We all know that she is hard of hearing, but this should not prevent her from being attentive to a game. Unfortunately, once she has expended her boules, she retreats into isolation and turns “a deaf ear” to the rest of the game.
She might be a nice person, but she can be exasperatingly argumentative.
Somebody has to talk to her. She is slowly alienating a bunch of players and in the future, she might find herself in a deeper isolation that she presently is.
It is a very difficult task since it almost impossible to have a heart-to-heart conversation with her. How can we handle this problem and keep everybody happy? Any shrink in our flock?
Alain