The Nailing Rules
When my kids were growing up, one of the games we played every summer was badminton. It was an easy way to get them out of the house and the sets were cheap and ubiquitous. When play first started it was all the oldest kid could do to even make contact with a slowly descending shuttle cock. However, doing my very best, I could sort of aim for his racket. If I heard even the faintest ping from his strings it was a sign of tremendous prowess and it deserved much praise. Yay! Let's get Roger Federer a juice box. Over the years their skills improved to the point that we could almost have a game. Not a REAL game, but a let's-see-how-many-times-we-can-hit-it-over-the-net-bullshit kind of a game. This required dad to be able to lob those birdies with a draftsman's accuracy. If I could maintain a parabola as smooth as the arc of protractor I could expect a return. That was good! Ok, boring, but at least we were headed in the right direction. Finally, the first son became old ...