David and Goliath: So, slingshots are a thing?
By The Editors
PlannedMan

As David knew when faced off against Goliath, sometimes having more will to win is more important than having more firepower.

David and Goliath: So, slingshots are a thing?

Highlights


A stone, a slingshot, a giant. Put them all together and what do you have?

A little lesson about stubborn perseverance.

Maybe you knew slingshots, like from the story of David and Goliath, are a thing.

I had no idea.

That is, until my distant neighbor (conveniently named David, as in “David and Goliath”) started trash-talking me and it worked itself into a challenge.

I live out in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain. He lives across the valley on the side of another mountain.

Goliath’s expertise and over-confidence get in his way.

At the bottom of my mountain is an apple orchard full of green apples. At the bottom of his mountain is an apple orchard full of red apples.

The challenge?

Which of us would be the first to build a slingshot so powerful that it can hurl an apple all the way from the top of one mountain to the top of the other mountain across the valley, and hit the other guy’s house?

You might think David has an advantage at accomplishing this impossible task, since he’s a retired weapons expert for the local PD and he’s always bragging about his marksmanship and weapon-building skills.

But I’m not so sure.

I’ve seen him attack a problem before, and his expertise has a way of getting in his way. He often suffers from over-confidence and “paralysis from analysis.”

Sure, there must be 100 different ways you could build this slingshot, and I’ll bet he’s going to think through all 100 ways before he decides on a plan that he believes will ultimately make him look like a weapons-grade genius.

Then he’ll be over there with a blowtorch and some scrap iron, thinking about how to build the best damn slingshot that’s ever been made.

But I know so little about the art and science of weaponry that all I can do is Google “what’s the best way to build a slingshot” and then start watching a couple of YouTube videos. And that leaves me buying surgical tubing made for spearfishing guns, and tying it off on a couple of trees:

And I guess that’s the irony here:

Even though his name is David, in this case he’s really Goliath, because when it comes to weapons and trajectories and ballistics, he has every advantage.

But is that going to stop me from pulling out my sling, five green apples, and (metaphorically speaking) slaying him?

Absolutely not, because I know I have the greatest advantage of all:

Even though I know it’s impossible to shoot an apple from one side of a mountain across a valley to the side of another mountain, and to do so with enough accuracy to hit the side of a house, I’m going to do it anyway or die trying because I always figure that’s the right way to approach just about everything in life.

Meanwhile, I guess, I have about the same odds and attitude that David had when he faced off against that fierce giant named Goliath that everyone (including Goliath) knew would pulverize him.

And we all know how that ended.

 

 

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