“There’s no crying in baseball,” was Jimmy Dugan’s guidance in A league of Their Own.  Advice that Both of We have given to many in many fields.  There’s no crying in yardwork.  There’s no crying in meatloaf.  There’s no crying in plumbing.  There’s no crying in college acceptance celebrations.  Hold on!  That last one isn’t one of ours.  Oh but it is one of the New York City school district.

Yes, in the highly competitive world of college admissions, New Yorkers (New Yorkers!?!) want to be certain that the egos of students not accepted into their first choice institutions are not unduly bruised.   Teachers are told not to congratulate students in public and if they should see someone crying to “be sensitive” and to refer them to the college advisory office (guidance counselor?) immediately.  Perhaps it’s the school advisors who should be considering select institutions.

But how could you blame the city schools for prohibiting public displays of best wishes?  They are just following the lead of several famous (or so we’re told) prep schools that have banned wearing college sweatshirts bearing the crests of the universities that have accepted their students or posting their good news on Facebook.

In January we asked in a post “How long has it been since we started instilling in our young people that there are no losers?” (Your Turn to Keep Score from Life, Jan 16, 2012).  We proposed then that it has been long enough that someday those young people will be running for “Congress, President, and your local school board.”  Seems like they might have already made it to the school boards.

We can poke fun at the bizarrely ridiculous notion that some adult somewhere really thinks that not going “Woohoo!” when a kid opens that long awaited letter from school will make life better for some other student who had a hard time spelling woohoo in Social Media 101.  The truth is that we have already seen how “everyone’s a winner” is destroying American life.  For example:   there’s no crying in bank failures; there’s no crying in corporate bankruptcies; there’s no crying in union negotiations; there’s no crying in lying in political ads; there’s no crying in government bail outs; there’s no crying in $5.00/gallon gasoline.

There used to be a lot of losing in life.  And those losses led to some of the biggest successes the world has seen.  Today we can say that life isn’t all winning and be absolutely accurate.  It isn’t.  There just isn’t any losing either.

Hey, there’s no crying in responsible adulthood.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?