Drop the Ball

The Story

Sometimes I talk to much and sometimes I don’t say the right thing.  I think that is something a lot of people can relate to. In English, we call this putting your foot in your mouth. In today’s story you will learn how I dropped the ball while talking to our new director.

The new director likes to come to the teacher’s office in the morning on occasion. I think she is just trying to create a better atmosphere and make a connection. It is really nice that she is doing that, but I am a different person in the morning. Usually, I don’t like talking. But, I am pretty good at small talk. And even though they are English teachers, my coworkers find it difficult to have a natural conversation with the director. That is understandable.

The thing that is not understandable is that they want me to talk to the director. They have even gone so far as to tell me I have to buy them coffee if I don’t talk to her for five minutes. Well, the director came into our office this morning and my coworker started talking to her. He is one of the ones that complains that I don’t talk to her. At one point, she turned around towards me and he kept talking. Of course, this is good, but I couldn’t help myself; I had to tease him. I motioned to him that he was talking too much and he said, “Oh, Director! Tim wants to say something to you.”

I had nothing to say. So, I just said what was on my mind at that time. I talked about my covid arm. It was a weird and awkward thing to talk about with the director. I made things even worse by showing everyone in the office. As you can imagine, they teased me about that. I really dropped the ball on this one.

Definition

Drop the ball means that you made a mistake or you didn’t handle a situation well. Often it is used to describe a missed opportunity.  In my example, I was given the opportunity to speak to our director and I mishandled the situation by saying something inappropriate.

Example: I asked him to take the cookies to grandmothers house but he dropped the ball and forgot.
Example (poorly handled situation): The road should have been fixed by now but the government dropped the ball.
Example (missed opportunity): You missed your chance to ask her out. You dropped the ball and now she is dating that other guy. 

Origin

The phrase comes from ball sports like baseball. Dropping the ball is a mistake. In baseball, you are supposed to catch the ball, not drop it. The phrase started being used to describe other types of mistakes starting the 1940s. Dropping the ball appears more in American English which suggests that it comes from a sport popular in America: possibly baseball or American football.

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Reference:
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/drop--the--ball
https://www.wise-geek.com/what-does-drop-the-ball-mean.htm