FDIL is also a blogger. Her blog has a theme: it's all quotes from her fifth grade students. It's hilarious and you simply must read the most recent entry about the "Jingle Pills." You can read it here: http://misswhatwilltheysaynext.blogspot.com/
Trust me, it'll make you laugh.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Friday Night Lights: A Retrospective
It's a cold Saturday morning and we had a frost last night, the first hard one of the season. We finally turned the heat on, just two days after running the air conditioning. And of course around these parts, we could have the AC humming again in a couple of days.
Younger Son's football season -- and his football playing days -- came to an end last night. It was the first round of the playoffs and, unfortunately, we were never really in the game against a powerhouse neighboring county team at their home field. This year's playoff system had two district champs playing each other so a good team (us) got knocked out early.
Younger Son was a bit teary when Wife and I met him on the field after the game, as were most of the senior players. These young athletes, so big and seemingly mature, still have a lot of "boy" in them (thankfully) and the emotion of losing their first playoff game and having their last season end so rudely played itself out in their hearts and on their faces, as it should. God gave them those emotions and they're nothing of which to be ashamed.
Wife and I experienced our own emotions on the ride home last night. Younger Son was our only football player in the family and he started when he was in sixth grade, playing in our local city league. We've been going to his football games for seven seasons.
He and I cut a family beach vacation short a couple of days to get him home for his first ever football practice in the late summer of 2004. Earlier that summer we had gone over to the league field house and gotten his equipment -- the helmet, practice pants and jersey, and pads.
As I remember, we arrived home from the beach a couple of hours before the practice was to start. I thought that, since I had not been a football player, I had better study all of this and make sure I knew how to get all of it on him. There appeared to be pads that were inserted into slots in his pants that appeared to correspond with his thighs, knees and butt.
Only I could not figure out what went where, how the belt was to feed through the belt loops or much of anything else for that matter. Younger Son was more helpless than I. I called a neighbor boy who had just graduated from high school with Older Son, a football player, and enlisted his help. He was over in minutes, got it all assembled and we soon had Younger Son outfitted. He walked awkwardly, kind of like the little boy from the movie "Christmas Story" who was so decked out in layers of apparel to keep him warm that he can hardly walk, and when he got pushed over he fell flat and couldn't get up.
The rest, as they say, is history, and Younger Son went on to play for two years in the city league, a year in middle school and four years in high school. He has had his ups and downs along the way and there has definitely been some associated heartache, especially in the high school years. We have had conversations about whether he would continue. I never tried to persuade him one way or the other; it was always his decision. As time went on a lot of his friends on the team called it quits and, consequently, he missed some activities in which he would have liked to participate and he ended up with only a few good friends on the team.
His perseverance and dedication were total and, unfortunately, that wasn't always rewarded. As his dad, that was tough to watch at times. And I know that my speeches on character building and life lessons got tiresome. I told him more than once that, despite feelings to the contrary, it would all go very fast.
Last Friday night, our last home game where we captured the district title, was Senior Night. Before the game, Wife and I walked on the field on either side of him right after he had presented Wife with a yellow rose and both of us with a note he had written, in which he thanked us for sticking by him through all of this.
And last night it ended. After he had gotten back to the school and changed, he called me. He was fine and said he was going to come home and shower, then go meet some of his friends.
Wife and I both hugged him again when he got home. I asked him if it was a somber ride back to the school and he said not really, that most of them realized they had had a good season and there was no use dwelling on it.
He showered quickly. He came downstairs and told us goodbye. He opened the door to leave, looked back over at me and said, "It flew, didn't it?"
"What's that?" I asked.
"Football."
"Yes," I said quietly. "It sure did."
Only I could not figure out what went where, how the belt was to feed through the belt loops or much of anything else for that matter. Younger Son was more helpless than I. I called a neighbor boy who had just graduated from high school with Older Son, a football player, and enlisted his help. He was over in minutes, got it all assembled and we soon had Younger Son outfitted. He walked awkwardly, kind of like the little boy from the movie "Christmas Story" who was so decked out in layers of apparel to keep him warm that he can hardly walk, and when he got pushed over he fell flat and couldn't get up.
The rest, as they say, is history, and Younger Son went on to play for two years in the city league, a year in middle school and four years in high school. He has had his ups and downs along the way and there has definitely been some associated heartache, especially in the high school years. We have had conversations about whether he would continue. I never tried to persuade him one way or the other; it was always his decision. As time went on a lot of his friends on the team called it quits and, consequently, he missed some activities in which he would have liked to participate and he ended up with only a few good friends on the team.
His perseverance and dedication were total and, unfortunately, that wasn't always rewarded. As his dad, that was tough to watch at times. And I know that my speeches on character building and life lessons got tiresome. I told him more than once that, despite feelings to the contrary, it would all go very fast.
Last Friday night, our last home game where we captured the district title, was Senior Night. Before the game, Wife and I walked on the field on either side of him right after he had presented Wife with a yellow rose and both of us with a note he had written, in which he thanked us for sticking by him through all of this.
And last night it ended. After he had gotten back to the school and changed, he called me. He was fine and said he was going to come home and shower, then go meet some of his friends.
Wife and I both hugged him again when he got home. I asked him if it was a somber ride back to the school and he said not really, that most of them realized they had had a good season and there was no use dwelling on it.
He showered quickly. He came downstairs and told us goodbye. He opened the door to leave, looked back over at me and said, "It flew, didn't it?"
"What's that?" I asked.
"Football."
"Yes," I said quietly. "It sure did."
***************************************************************
Here are some shots from the season:
On the offensive line
With his bro and sis
With his proud mom and dad
The "fam"
(BELOW:) the night he was captain; number 70
With his buds
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Election Returns
Some thoughts from this week’s mid-term elections (and I’ll stay off of politics for a while after this):
The news analysts are going crazy trying to figure out what kind of impact the Tea Party and “Tea Party candidates” had on the elections. It boosted Republicans but also hurt them, they’re telling us. Well, maybe. Ultimately, though, it comes down to – shock of shocks – voter preference.
As I have said before, I generally vote Republican but not always. If I lived in Delaware, I would not have voted for Republican Christine O’Donnel. If I lived in Florida I would have voted for Charlie Crist, who ran as an independent, instead of the Republican Marco Rubio. And if I had been an Alaskan voter, I would have written in Lisa Murkowski’s name. I’m not really too concerned about whether a candidate is part of the so called Tea Party or not, a movement with which I have some sympathies but also some differences.
Like any movement or group, there are strong and weak candidates. But obviously, this is a force to be reckoned with. More important is the fact that it’s the independent voter who is calling the shots in this country. As I read somewhere, “Yes we can” has met head on with, “Oh no you don’t.”
****************************************************************
I had been kind of excited about Tuesday night and thought it would be fun hearing the reports coming in from around the country and hearing the pundits babble a bit. Ultimately, though, it was the same tired rhetoric and not that interesting. Whether it was Fox, CNN, or one of the other networks, the talking heads were telling us the same thing with perhaps a different spin here and there. They seemed more excited about the cool special effects – touch-screen poll results, stand-alone graphs that seem to pop up out of the floor, etc. -- than anything very substantive.
And the candidates? Would someone please give them some new material? How many times over the course of my life watching election returns have I heard from every corner and every political persuasion something equivalent to, “The people have spoken and we are taking this country back?” Back from who? Back from what? Again, try something new.
***********************************************************************
I’m done with rock-star politicians. I had a lot of respect and admiration for Sarah Palin when John McCain picked her as his running mate. I think she did a decent job in the campaign. I realize, especially after reading the book Game Change and other accounts of the 2008 election, that she was in way over her head and of course the media crucified her. In hindsight, she probably wasn’t the best pick for McCain. Still, I think she gave it a good run, and in my continuing quest to believe the best in people, I like to believe she had the best interest of the country at heart. (I even believe that about Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank -- really).
If only she would have gone back to Alaska and finished the job to which she had been elected, I might still be one of her defenders. But I believe that she turned her back on the citizens of Alaska when she resigned as their governor and she lost me as a supporter when she did it. That was the job to which she had been elected and she should have fulfilled her commitment (unless, of course, she had actually gone on to be vice president). When she made the announcement that she was resigning, she said something totally nonsensical about not continuing “politics as usual,” as if that catch phrase was supposed to explain why she was abandoning the people who elected her.
She was barely out of the governor’s office before she was writing a book, touring the country on a bus and signing on with Fox News. I’ve heard that her daughter is on Dancing With the Stars and I don’t know if she’s considered a star or she dances with one (I’ve never seen the show). And of course a run for the presidency in a couple of years is probable. Her style is not unlike that of Barack Obama himself, once the darling of a certain brand of up-and-comers. She’s the darling of a whole different and diametrically opposed brand of them, of course, but the similarities are there.
And this ilk of politics – and politician -- turns me off.
The news analysts are going crazy trying to figure out what kind of impact the Tea Party and “Tea Party candidates” had on the elections. It boosted Republicans but also hurt them, they’re telling us. Well, maybe. Ultimately, though, it comes down to – shock of shocks – voter preference.
As I have said before, I generally vote Republican but not always. If I lived in Delaware, I would not have voted for Republican Christine O’Donnel. If I lived in Florida I would have voted for Charlie Crist, who ran as an independent, instead of the Republican Marco Rubio. And if I had been an Alaskan voter, I would have written in Lisa Murkowski’s name. I’m not really too concerned about whether a candidate is part of the so called Tea Party or not, a movement with which I have some sympathies but also some differences.
Like any movement or group, there are strong and weak candidates. But obviously, this is a force to be reckoned with. More important is the fact that it’s the independent voter who is calling the shots in this country. As I read somewhere, “Yes we can” has met head on with, “Oh no you don’t.”
****************************************************************
I had been kind of excited about Tuesday night and thought it would be fun hearing the reports coming in from around the country and hearing the pundits babble a bit. Ultimately, though, it was the same tired rhetoric and not that interesting. Whether it was Fox, CNN, or one of the other networks, the talking heads were telling us the same thing with perhaps a different spin here and there. They seemed more excited about the cool special effects – touch-screen poll results, stand-alone graphs that seem to pop up out of the floor, etc. -- than anything very substantive.
And the candidates? Would someone please give them some new material? How many times over the course of my life watching election returns have I heard from every corner and every political persuasion something equivalent to, “The people have spoken and we are taking this country back?” Back from who? Back from what? Again, try something new.
***********************************************************************
I’m done with rock-star politicians. I had a lot of respect and admiration for Sarah Palin when John McCain picked her as his running mate. I think she did a decent job in the campaign. I realize, especially after reading the book Game Change and other accounts of the 2008 election, that she was in way over her head and of course the media crucified her. In hindsight, she probably wasn’t the best pick for McCain. Still, I think she gave it a good run, and in my continuing quest to believe the best in people, I like to believe she had the best interest of the country at heart. (I even believe that about Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank -- really).
If only she would have gone back to Alaska and finished the job to which she had been elected, I might still be one of her defenders. But I believe that she turned her back on the citizens of Alaska when she resigned as their governor and she lost me as a supporter when she did it. That was the job to which she had been elected and she should have fulfilled her commitment (unless, of course, she had actually gone on to be vice president). When she made the announcement that she was resigning, she said something totally nonsensical about not continuing “politics as usual,” as if that catch phrase was supposed to explain why she was abandoning the people who elected her.
She was barely out of the governor’s office before she was writing a book, touring the country on a bus and signing on with Fox News. I’ve heard that her daughter is on Dancing With the Stars and I don’t know if she’s considered a star or she dances with one (I’ve never seen the show). And of course a run for the presidency in a couple of years is probable. Her style is not unlike that of Barack Obama himself, once the darling of a certain brand of up-and-comers. She’s the darling of a whole different and diametrically opposed brand of them, of course, but the similarities are there.
And this ilk of politics – and politician -- turns me off.
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