Coach Rose

She'll never be the player she used to be. She can't jump and she can't dribble. She can't go left and she can't go right. Occasionally she can get off a good shot and it might even go in the basket, but it's getting rarer. And she's got a No Trade clause.

And anyway, we don't want to trade her, we want her back the way she used to be. But when you travel for any length of time on the River Denial, you find it easy to ignore what you were seeing for months, perhaps years earlier. You know if you go back in these very pages you'll find comments about her loss of memory, her inability to handle any but a small gathering, and many other little things, that by themselves are nothing but rain but, when put together, begin to form that cloud that terrifies us all.

So what do you? You make her the coach.

One thing's for sure about Coach Rose -- you never know what she's going to do. All we hope for is a little better yesterday (it was), followed by a little better today which precedes a little better tomorrow. The game is 'way easier when you break it into small steps.

Plotnik could say the same thing about himself. He's got to get back playing ball again.