Tennis, prostitutes and triangles

Daniel has started taking tennis lessons. We thought it would be fun for him and a good way to develop some bat and ball skills and so far he’s enjoying them. His first lesson was last week and I haven’t mentioned anything to the coach about his suspected autism but one thing about autistic children is that you really need to be clear with instructions because they take everything so literally. The coach has a bucket of balls by his feet which the children use for practising their swing. The kids go in turn and after their turn, they need to go and collect some balls to top up the bucket with. After Daniel’s turn, the coach told him to “go and collect the balls”. All the other kids understood that they needed to walk to the other side of the net, pick up balls and put them in the bucket. Daniel was very confused by the instruction and instead went and grabbed an armful of balls from the bucket and took them to the coach. I’ve since explained the process to Daniel by way of diagram, so hopefully this week he’ll understand.

When my aunt was visiting Auckland, she got up early on Saturday morning for a brisk walk. I have read lately about the dangers of walking through the central city on Friday and Saturday night but have not had any personal experience. My aunt was subjected to groups of youths cursing and obviously still intoxicated from the night before and was at one stage approached by a middle-aged couple, with the toothless male half of the equation offering himself as a male prostitute. Her first thought was, “do I look so old that I need to pay for it?”. I should add here that my aunt is a very attractive, slim woman in possession of a full set of teeth. Ah, wonderful Auckland, city of cars and litter-filled beaches, drunken youths and traffic jams and middle-aged, homeless, male prostitutes. What a lovely place.

My aunt told me about an idea called the triangle of happiness which describes a triangle: the points represent where you sleep, where you work and where you shop. The theory is that the shorter the sides of the triangle, the happier the human, as long as there’s social interaction to be had. Long commute times are associated with social isolation which causes unhappiness. It was dreamt up by Harvard political scientist, Robert Putnam. More info about it can be found in The New Yorker’s There and Back Again. Our Auckland triangle is too big.