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© Copyright 1998, Jim Loy
Columbia Falls was heavily favored over Stevensville. On the first or second play of the game, Craig Finberg ran for what he thought was a touchdown. When he crossed the 10-yard line, he thought he was in the end zone. He was tackled on his way back to the sidelines.
There was no 5-yard line. They had run out of that white line stuff, and had not marked either 5-yard line. And they forgot to tell anybody about it. So the 10-yard line looked like a big end zone, sort of.
Columbia Falls never scored on that series of downs, and lost to Stevensville.
How could Craig have mistaken the 10-yard line for the goal line? The goal posts were way back there. There were other clues, too.
Well, you don't reason out every little thing. You look at the clues. But you're seldom aware of your own thought processes. You see one clue, and you deduce "end zone." And you don't look for more clues. Maybe you (all of us) should look for more clues. It wouldn't hurt to run through the endzone every time, just to be safe.
You can easily be obsessed about things like that. Am I screwing up? Did I do this? Did I do that? Did I leave the water running?
Craig admitted that he goofed up. But, that's the way the human mind works. Mistakes are natural, and somewhat unavoidable. Who would have thought that Craig had to reason out which line was which?
My brother, a teacher, tells me that not only are mistakes unavoidable, but they are useful.
As a checkers player (and a chess player) I know that I have learned very little from my victories. But I learned a great deal from many (not all) of my losses.