Mon, Sep 08 2008
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Published April 25, 2008 03:22 pm - My wife is a better volleyball coach than I am. Of course, that’s not too surprising. My wife is better at a lot of things than I am. Mike Pound: Listen up! His wife is a better coach My wife is a better volleyball coach than I am. Of course, that’s not too surprising. My wife is better at a lot of things than I am. In no particular order, my wife is better than I am at bowling, clothes shopping, hair-related stuff, colors, wallpapering, wall painting, planning, remembering lyrics to songs, remembering our 10-year-old daughter Emma’s birthday, finding stuff, losing stuff, remembering her birthday, grocery shopping and yelling. It’s that yelling part that makes my wife a better volleyball coach than I am. My wife, myself and our friend Mike coach a volleyball team. On the team are Emma and Katie, Mike’s daughter. In addition to Emma and Katie, there are eight other female-type people on the team. The female-type people on the team range in age from 10 to 12. Now most folks who know will tell you that an age range of 10 to 12 in female-type people is a heck of a range. To be able to communicate with a group of 10- to 12-year-old female-type people, one must be able to understand 10- to 12-year-old female-type people. My friend Mike and I do not understand 10- to 12-year-old female people. My wife does. That’s why she is a better volleyball coach than I am. At a typical volleyball practice, I will start off talking to the girls on our team about the importance of concentration. I will talk to them about the need to work as a team. I will talk to them about ... well, at that point I will have to stop talking to the girls on the team for a minute and remind them that I am talking to them. Then my wife will talk to the girls. “Listen up,” my wife will say. And they will! I don’t how she does that. In fairness to me, the girls on our volleyball team don’t pay much attention to Mike either. And he carries a gun to work. Also to be fair, the girls on our volleyball team don’t completely ignore Mike and me. They just don’t give us their full attention. What they do is sort of half pay attention to us. We’ll explain how to run a certain drill, for example, and the girls will look at us relatively intently. Well, some of the girls will look at us relatively intently. The rest of the girls will be talking about somebody’s tennis shoes or something that happened at school. Then, when we stop explaining the volleyball drill in order to get the attention of the girls who are talking about shoes, the girls who were looking at us relatively intently will wander off to watch the girls on the other volleyball team practicing on the court next to us. My wife will watch Mike and me trying to talk to the girls on our team for a few minutes. Then she will roll her eyes and will yell: “LISTEN UP!” And they will! I don’t know how she does that. I think one of the reasons the girls on our team will listen to my wife is because she occasionally yells at them. Mike and I don’t do much yelling. I’m guessing if we were coaching 10- to 12-year-old male-type people we would yell at them. But we aren’t, so we don’t. 
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