Sunday, March 23, 2014

Winning and Losing

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As I'm writing this blog entry, our Alma Mater, Wichita State University is playing in the NCAA tournament.  It's going to be a close game--right now WSU is behind by 4 points.  This team has not lost a game all season.  They are 35-0 right now, an NCAA record.  I don't like close games and I really don't like losing games.  How can this be?  They have to win today.  Why?  Just because they have a perfect record and have to continue.  Kentucky can't take it away from them.

Boy, I sound like a real sportsy type person.  I'm usually passive when it comes to anything but baseball (Go Giants!) but a good basketball game is always enjoyable.  Football? I couldn't care less.  Soccer? OK but the fans are way too loud and crazy.  Baseball's the best because at least I can keep up with the action.  Whoo-hoo! Wichita just made a basket--now they're down  by three. Whoa!  Now Kentucky scored--help! I can't keep up.  If I go according to Dave's outbursts i can get a pretty good feel for what's going on on the court.  There seems to be no forgiveness in sports.  You're either wonderful (perfect) or awful (less than perfect).  In my school days, girls didn't participate in competitive sports so I never developed that "do or die" attitude that men seem to have.

Dave and I graduated from WSU--he in 1975 with a Bachelor of Business Administration  and i in 1980 with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing.  While he was attending WSU, I was working on my RN at Wesley School of Nursing in Wichita, graduating in 1975 as well.  We moved to Wichita right after we were married in 1973 and lived there for 2 1/2 years.  With us both going to school full-time, working part-time and learning how to  be married, we were under a lot of stress.  May I say it once more?  A LOT of STRESS.  There were some touch-and-go times for sure.  The good news is that I was 600+ miles away from my family in Illinois so I had nowhere to run when times got tough.  That would have only made things much worse if I could have run home to Mommy whenever I wanted to get away.

Living in the "big city" was a switch for both of us as we were raised in very small mid-western towns of less than 3,000 people.  We started college in Hillsboro, Kansas at Tabor College.  A tiny, Christian school in a tiny Mennonite town in south central Kansas.  Kind of like an extension of High School.  It was a good place for me to get my feet wet in the big wide world of life. Until then I had been a mama's baby, especially when I was a kid.  I would often have to go back home on sleep overs because I was homesick.  That even happened at church camp.  Because of past experiences, I didn't know how I would adapt to being so far away from my family.  Surprisingly I did very well.  I fell right into the social scene of dorm living and had a ball.  Dave and I met the first week and that certainly helped me to feel happy there.  We were married two years later, changing majors, schools, living situations and my name all withing a few weeks!  Fun times.  We loved living in Wichita--a good big city to "cut your teeth on" as far as city living goes.  We exercised Dave's status as a brand new 21 year-old and found all the best college bars.  We danced, drank, went to parties, studied (maybe not as much as we should have) and generally had a pretty good time.  Being married was fun and it probably freed up a lot of time since we didn't have to plan dates.

Back to Wichita State...The years we were there there were some very good basketball teams and we enjoyed going to the games.  Wichita State hasn't had football since the entire team was killed an a tragic plane crash in 1969.  That was shortly before our time, but it made a huge impact on the school's sports department.  Dave joined a business fraternity while at WSU so we had an instant social group.  It was fun because there were always great parties.  I suppose they did did some "Business" stuff and Dave did make a lot of connections that served him well in his later business career.

Back to the game...We're behind 2 points and there are 42.6 seconds left.  Oh my......Oh, my oh my...Oh dear, we lost by 2.  After 35 wins and 0 losses, WSU lost by 2.  Well, that's sports for you.  Fortunately, our lives aren't based on how well or badly a sports team does.  We look to God for our guidance and have found this to be the true winning team!

So, as Tigger would say, "Ta Ta For Now!"