The Row Principle

4^th June 2015

Dear Cassi,

I ran into an old memory the other day in preparation for something, and felt I should share it with you. It’s funny how the world works like that, and something just pops back into my head after so long.

       

When I was in middle school, after my pool exploded and my mother passed away I got very out of shape. I couldn’t run ten steps without getting winded and I felt old. Funny to think you should feel old at eleven, but I felt old none the less.

       

Now I went to middle school and had P.E. once a day like every other fellow and so had to do with a P.E. teacher I’ll call Row. He kind of reminded me of an old crow carved of withered wood, but I’m going to call him Row so as not to offend that bird. I couldn’t spell his real name off the top of my head but what does it matter?

       

In any case, we were running the field one day and I was dead last with the old Row pacing me. I kept my speed even though it hurt like hell, and I had to close my eyes from the pain. I was out of breath and aching but would give him no ground. 

To add injury to insult his knee stopped working, and he ran with one stiff leg but could have out ran me at any moment. Somehow we were talking. I couldn’t give you an explanation for that, but mostly he was talking.  He told me how he won track meets as a coach by pacing the worst runner and making them keep running.

“The last runner gets down to a slow trot,” he told me. “I keep telling them not to give up. Come on, pass just one more kid.”

Row would focus on his weakest point, and this would make the largest impact on his work. It’s a funny way of looking at things until you break it down. Like I said for my projects, “if you have a car with a good engine but a bad transmission it still will never run.”

If you want to paint and you can’t paint clouds maybe you should paint clouds until you get it right. If you’re bad at something work at it until you get it right.

I will call this the ‘Row Principle’ your weakest point is where you can most improve.

Never give up, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal