Sko Ducks

Last night my wife and I went out to dinner with friends after back-to-school night. A couple came in and stopped at the two-top next to us to say hello to the couple already sitting there. The women knew each other. The men, as far as I could tell, had never met.

One was wearing a University of Oregon polo. The other pointed at it and said, "Hey, Sco Ducks!"

"Ha, that’s right," the first one said. "Sco Ducks!"

My wife and I looked at each other. Our daughter leaves for Eugene at the end of September.

I understood the phrase. What surprised me was that I felt something about it. A small pull, in a restaurant, toward two people I have never met.

I couldn't tell you when that started.

Maybe it was walking campus in the spring, on the paths she'll walk. Maybe the overnight, when she came back with a class schedule and a slightly more confident posture.

Maybe it was the mail.

For most of this year, UO has sent us something green and yellow almost every other week. Stickers, keychains, postcards, tote bags. Most of it’s in a drawer in our kitchen now.

But we’ve kept them.

Nobody ever asked us to become fans of this school. Our daughter just decided to apply. Everything after that was a long series of small, easy ways to stand a little closer, and we took every one of them.

I've spent years watching smart people rewrite the copy on the homepage for the hundredth time, hunting for the sentence that finally convinces someone to do the thing. That perfect sentence is a myth.

A perfect moment can spark something, sure. You fall for a song in the first few seconds, you lock eyes with someone across a room. But the spark is never what holds you over time.

What holds you is the thousand confirmations after it, each one small enough to say yes to without feeling like you’re deciding anything.

That's the part a lot of us skip when we build for other people. We focus on writing the copy for the outside of the package or hunt for the perfect words to close the deal.

But the work that actually pulls someone in is more subtle, and it’s slower. A long supply of small, low-stakes ways to stand a little closer, offered again and again, until they look up and find they never really chose, yet they're already in.

You get to choose which one you're building. The perfect line, or the long supply of small yeses.

My daughter hasn't moved into the dorms. Hasn't been to a game.

And last night, at a table we weren't even sitting at, I found out I was already in.

~ Jaime

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Thanks for spending time with Red Threads. I’m glad you’re here.