WHEN I WAS ABOUT 12, I PLAYED baseball in the street with a group of neighborhood kids. None of us knew how to play; the point was to have fun.
One day while we were playing, a girl who lived in a big house on the corner – Jenny, I distinctly remember – arrived carrying a clipboard. She’d prepared rules and schedules to bring order and direction to our spontaneous play and started to boss us around.
I didn’t pull any punches. I told Jenny outright that she’d ruined everything, and I wasn’t going to play anymore. Everyone else agreed, and our clumsy baseball games came to an end.
Jenny is the outline: the uptight, high-maintenance spoilsport who tries to control something that should be free and fun and spontaneous.
Or so people who
