‘King Of The Bores’ And Other Things To Ponder
September 18, 2021 at 4:19 a.m.
‘King Of The Bores’ And Other Things To Ponder
By Chip Davenport-
I’m Chip Davenport, king of the bores.
I never understood that. If a person doesn’t want to know how I’m doing, they should simply say, “hello” to me. How difficult of a rule is this for all of us to follow?
Even If I were to answer, “fine”, the social norm, I wonder, am I – or are you, or are we – properly describing how I am truly “doing?”
Friday was one of those days for me. I had so many thoughts racing through my mind, and I exacerbated that problem by quickly drinking two very powerful espressos. Lord have mercy on those who came to speak to me yesterday afternoon until the espresso boost wore off around 6:00 p.m. Friday night.
If I ask you how you’re doing, it’s a sincere invitation to reply. It’s kind of like the Canadians I worked with from my mid-30s to my mid-40s. They ended their sentences with “eh?”, and it’s not a quirk, or a dialect issue. It’s an invitation to a reply.
“That guy’s a (expletive)-disturber, eh?” When someone says something so strong, they want you to join the chorus, not just say, “uh-huh.”
One of my favorite rejoinders to “how are you doing”, my best practice for summing up an array of conflicting dispositions is, “I’d complain, but who’d listen?”
When I usually complain to you, though, you’d have to hear about some of the solutions I’m considering, or the remedies I already started to apply to my complaints. I don’t mind hearing people’s complaints if solutions accompany them.
Most successful coaches will identify complaints, but we’ll call them challenges here, and then they will share their solutions.
I enjoy asking coaches how they/their team are/is doing in postgame interviews because they’ll tell you.
Bart Curtis (football), Jon Hoover (soccer), Lenny Krebs (girls’ basketball), Kris Hueber (wrestling), and Matt Moore (boys’ basketball) will give me enough postgame comments to fill almost one full page of a typed document.
None of these gentlemen are a bore, and none of them comment on challenges without a suggested or already-determined solution.
Double bonus for me.
Folks, you might have to listen non-stop, or interact with questions and answers, with people in your life who will tell you how you’re doing when you ask them. There are nuggets of wisdom in some of these interactions ranging from three-to-six minutes.
Some of this interaction, as it applies to my sports writing, will likely be the best way to articulate a situation quoting these coaches word-for-word. Some of it will allow me to gain insight on how to articulate a critical point in the game. Some of it is worth saving for later thoughts and insights to guide me through the season. This list of fruits borne from these interactions is not all-inclusive. I just enjoy speaking, writing, and thinking in threes.
I worked for a woman who told me, “Chipper,” not Staff Sergeant Davenport mind you, “I realize to get one minute of information from you I’ll need three minutes, but I’ll let you keep going as long as you provide additional things for me to think about during that extra time. However, I also reserve the right to cut you off when I don’t need those extra minutes.”
Johnette Howard and I worked swimmingly within those parameters. She was the cool, smart aunt to my annoying diamond-in-the-rough nephew.
Full disclosure, tears started welling when I typed her words. I thought about her because after 27 years in the figurative desert I actually have another person I work for who is wise in his counsel, and he matches her ability to de-escalate me.
It has been one of those weeks. With that said, I digress.
I still have a 20-minute and a 10-minute interview and dialogue with Coach Hueber about building a wrestling program running parallel to the same season when Warsaw is steeped into hoops and the Hoosier Hysteria it has come to be named.
Some of the quotes when into written wrestling coverage for sectionals and regionals, but those two conversations shed so much light into the path from what I saw on the mat last year to where Hueber wants his wrestling program to be.
I’ve replayed it a few times. It’s feature-worthy, and the insights in how a coach can project (to see where his underclassmen will be as juniors and seniors) is golden.
Sometimes what you get from asking someone how they are today will provide nuggets of insight, wisdom, or valuable information later.
Maya Angelou, former U.S. poet laureate, said, “If someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Long live the king.
I’m Chip Davenport, king of the bores.
I never understood that. If a person doesn’t want to know how I’m doing, they should simply say, “hello” to me. How difficult of a rule is this for all of us to follow?
Even If I were to answer, “fine”, the social norm, I wonder, am I – or are you, or are we – properly describing how I am truly “doing?”
Friday was one of those days for me. I had so many thoughts racing through my mind, and I exacerbated that problem by quickly drinking two very powerful espressos. Lord have mercy on those who came to speak to me yesterday afternoon until the espresso boost wore off around 6:00 p.m. Friday night.
If I ask you how you’re doing, it’s a sincere invitation to reply. It’s kind of like the Canadians I worked with from my mid-30s to my mid-40s. They ended their sentences with “eh?”, and it’s not a quirk, or a dialect issue. It’s an invitation to a reply.
“That guy’s a (expletive)-disturber, eh?” When someone says something so strong, they want you to join the chorus, not just say, “uh-huh.”
One of my favorite rejoinders to “how are you doing”, my best practice for summing up an array of conflicting dispositions is, “I’d complain, but who’d listen?”
When I usually complain to you, though, you’d have to hear about some of the solutions I’m considering, or the remedies I already started to apply to my complaints. I don’t mind hearing people’s complaints if solutions accompany them.
Most successful coaches will identify complaints, but we’ll call them challenges here, and then they will share their solutions.
I enjoy asking coaches how they/their team are/is doing in postgame interviews because they’ll tell you.
Bart Curtis (football), Jon Hoover (soccer), Lenny Krebs (girls’ basketball), Kris Hueber (wrestling), and Matt Moore (boys’ basketball) will give me enough postgame comments to fill almost one full page of a typed document.
None of these gentlemen are a bore, and none of them comment on challenges without a suggested or already-determined solution.
Double bonus for me.
Folks, you might have to listen non-stop, or interact with questions and answers, with people in your life who will tell you how you’re doing when you ask them. There are nuggets of wisdom in some of these interactions ranging from three-to-six minutes.
Some of this interaction, as it applies to my sports writing, will likely be the best way to articulate a situation quoting these coaches word-for-word. Some of it will allow me to gain insight on how to articulate a critical point in the game. Some of it is worth saving for later thoughts and insights to guide me through the season. This list of fruits borne from these interactions is not all-inclusive. I just enjoy speaking, writing, and thinking in threes.
I worked for a woman who told me, “Chipper,” not Staff Sergeant Davenport mind you, “I realize to get one minute of information from you I’ll need three minutes, but I’ll let you keep going as long as you provide additional things for me to think about during that extra time. However, I also reserve the right to cut you off when I don’t need those extra minutes.”
Johnette Howard and I worked swimmingly within those parameters. She was the cool, smart aunt to my annoying diamond-in-the-rough nephew.
Full disclosure, tears started welling when I typed her words. I thought about her because after 27 years in the figurative desert I actually have another person I work for who is wise in his counsel, and he matches her ability to de-escalate me.
It has been one of those weeks. With that said, I digress.
I still have a 20-minute and a 10-minute interview and dialogue with Coach Hueber about building a wrestling program running parallel to the same season when Warsaw is steeped into hoops and the Hoosier Hysteria it has come to be named.
Some of the quotes when into written wrestling coverage for sectionals and regionals, but those two conversations shed so much light into the path from what I saw on the mat last year to where Hueber wants his wrestling program to be.
I’ve replayed it a few times. It’s feature-worthy, and the insights in how a coach can project (to see where his underclassmen will be as juniors and seniors) is golden.
Sometimes what you get from asking someone how they are today will provide nuggets of insight, wisdom, or valuable information later.
Maya Angelou, former U.S. poet laureate, said, “If someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Long live the king.
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