Shake It Off

One of my favorite stories that can easily be related to sport is the one about a farmer's donkey that fell into a dry well. The animal cried pitifully for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do for his poor donkey. Finally, he concluded that the well was too deep, and it really needed to be covered up anyway. Besides, the donkey was old, and it would be a lot of trouble to get him out of the pit. The farmer decided that it was not worth trying to retrieve the animal, so he asked his neighbors to help him fill in the well and bury the donkey.

They all grabbed shovels and began to toss dirt into the well. The donkey immediately realized what was happening, and he began to bray horribly. Crying would be our normal response if somebody was mistreating us this badly, so this donkey was responding the same way we would at first, but then he got really quiet. A few shovel loads of dirt later, the farmer looked down the well and was astonished at what he saw. With every shovel of dirt that hit the donkey's back, the donkey would shake it off and step on top of it.

As the neighbors and the farmer continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he continued to shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon the donkey shook off the last shovel full of dirt, took a step up, and walked right out of the well.

For any of you that follow the Winnipeg Jets, you will know that they are currently on a 5 game losing skid.  This is not uncommon in team sports (I think most of us have been there before if we've been involved in sport for any length of time - or maybe Claude Noel and I have been the only lucky ones to get to work through this).  However, if you follow our local media outlets at all you will notice there is an epidemic of bandwagon jumping.  It seems people cannot disown the Winnipeg Jets fast enough and the criticism and vulgar comments are a flowin'! 

True Champions are able to take a seemingly hopeless situation and turn it into a success.  I don't know if the Winnipeg Jets have it in them to be true Champions, but there is certainly enough dirt being tossed their way for them to take a step up!

~ Go Jets Go ~

 

~H