Where's the catch?

So I'm at work and we have an issue about some less than collaborative behaviour from one quarter and the tendency of some individuals / teams / organisations to just step in and try and take over without thinking about other people's sensitivities and whether it's the right thing to do. So I tell the following story to illustrate the point:

It's 1971, a hot summer's day. I'm a shy and spotty 12 year old who is struggling academically at Grammar school and hopeless at sports. We're on the cricket pitch and they've stuck me halfway out to the boundary where I can't do too much damage. A few yards away, growling in the slips and directing the team is Dashing Dave, the house captain. He is the odious type who is brilliant, top of the class, excels at sports and already being groomed for head boy five years down the line. The batsman hits the ball and it is coming up in a wonderful slow arc, straight at me. I feel a thrill of excitement. I can do this. I can catch this ball. I can show them I am not just the no-hoper. I drop down on one knee, hands cupped, ready to take the glory for once.

At which point Dashing Dave strolls up, stands in front of me and does a one handed take, then dismissively tosses the ball back towards the stumps as if it's no big deal, amidst a tinkling of applause and cries of "well caught". Meanwhile I am still kneeling on the grass with my hands in supplicant fashion like some pathetic beggar in a poor plastic parody of one of Rodin's heroic marble figures.

In recounting this story I was making the point that some people just can't help taking control, even when it's not the right thing to do. It was only a house game, we were winning comfortably, even if he didn't trust me it would have been good to take the risk on the off chance it would help to build my confidence. But Dashing Dave was always the surly obvious type. Ironically he was never a leader despite being groomed for stardom; his skills were about him and not about others.

He didn't actually make head boy. By the time we all got to the sixth form a quiet, well organised lad who majored on relationship building with teachers and fellow students had rightly earned that accolade. Dashing Dave had a very brief career as a professional footballer with our local team, who in those days were in the old second division (now The Championship). Those old boys who watched his progress from the terraces (myself included) heard on the grapevine that he blamed his failure to thrive in the professional game on the club's poor organisation and lack of ambition. He left and went into accountancy and I lost track of him. The team he didn't make the grade with went on to the Premiership.

I had to get this off my chest once it had surfaced. We all have our old, hurtful stories. Bottom line is I would have done anything to have swapped places with Dashing Dave then - but not now. Not in a million years. I have so many good things in my life - my family, my friends, my passions.

The things that really matter to me are in safe hands. I took the catch that mattered.