Category: Growing up

When I was growing up as a Generation X kid, our kindergarten basketball goal wasn’t adjustable. There were no lowered rims for little kids. There was just one goal — 10 feet high, the same height the NBA uses.

That’s what we had, so that’s what we played on.

We missed a lot.
We learned to shoot higher.
And when a shot finally went in, it meant something.

Every basket felt earned.

Looking back, I think that shaped us. My generation often did hard things simply because we didn’t know they were supposed to be easier. We adapted. We figured it out. And those small struggles trained us for bigger ones later in life.

Today we have the ability to engineer solutions for everything. We can lower the basketball goal. We can soften the rules. We can make sure everyone feels successful.

But just because we can, should we?

Look at the great NBA players who came from Generation X. Many of them grew up shooting on the same 10-foot goals we did. The path to excellence didn’t start by lowering the standard.

So it raises a larger question.

Why do we feel the need to lower the goal?

And why do we feel the need to hand out trophies simply for showing up and doing life?

Sometimes the struggle is the lesson.
Sometimes the high goal is the point.

Photos of 211 S Clarkwood Rd, Corpus Christi, TX 78406 by Efren Martinez

Post created by Derrick Perrin using notebook LM

When I saw photos from my kindergarten, it took me right back to the early 1980s and to an old school on Clarkwood Road outside of Corpus Christi, Texas. I have a good group of friends who went from kindergarten through 12th grade together at Tuloso-Midway School.

It was around 1982 or 1983, and our school had just installed a computer in each classroom. We were pretty spoiled for the time—but not spoiled enough to have a basketball goal you could lower.

“From 1970 to 1988, Tuloso-Midway Independent School District continued to operate Clarkwood School as Clarkwood Elementary School. Clarkwood School closed in 1988 due to a lack of state and local funding.”

You can read more about the old building here:
https://mixerrreviews.blogspot.com/2021/01/exploring-history-of-clarkwood-school.html

So the old goal is still on the wall, just the same as it was when my little friends and I would lob basketballs up in the air, hoping one of them would make it into that 10-foot rim.