10 Minute Rule

This weekend all my kids’ basketball teams won their games. Like I said in an earlier post, that stuff matters. It isn’t because my kids are winning–losing has a much higher importance at this stage of their competitive development–it is because of who we are beating. Youth leagues are filled with coaches who don’t do things the right way. There are a slew of win first or look good first or even humiliate the opposition coaches who snap the fun out of a sport like they are wringing a towel. When I come up against one of these coaches I want to win. I coach harder, our whole coaching team bands together to squeeze every ounce of hustle out of our kids that we can. Sure, we want the hustle to become their mantra, but in those moments we also want to win.

Beating other coaches shouldn’t matter as much as it does, but it does. These guys come dressed in their matching outfits looking all the world like wannabe professionals and it bothers me when they beat my teams. It reminds me that shortcuts work. I says that if you find one kid who is extraordinary then you can ignore the development of the kids around them in pursuit of your winning. We don’t do it and sometimes we lose because of that. It serves as a reminder that there is always someone out there a bit cooler, faster, smarter than you are–someone who gets the job done better. Things like that push me to be more successful–even if less than they did before I had kids. Before the kids I was a lot more focused in mind, body, and spirit. Now it feels like I spend any free moments just trying to catch my breath.

Some Thoughts:

1. I think I figured out what hurts me most about the loss of my father-in-law. He is the last male father figure I have left. Sure, my biological dad is out there somewhere, but somewhere is a large place-especially when you don’t have any real interest in being found. So, that’s it. No more male role model to turn to and see what it means to grow old wisely. I need to figure out the rest of my journey on my own.
2. At some point I think I’ll take a pilgrimage to see the grave sights of my dad, Clarence and my father-in-law. It may be a journey I need to make alone, so I will need to figure out what to do about the wife and kids…

I’ve come to realize that my children are evil.

I’m not talking in the Dahmer “eat your face” or Damien “I am of the devil” evil, but a more subtle evil which masks itself as youthful folly and boredom. Kids in general are evil. We like to pretend they are sweet and cherubic, but they are trying out all the things life has to offer; all the manipulations and exploits they can discover. A child will lie to your face and, once caught, shrug it off as if it never mattered to begin with. Their quickly developing self-preservation instinct will lead them to manipulate and cajole at levels reserved for sociopaths and politicians. God forbid you challenge these antics. One small punishment becomes the line separating life from death–a line you placed them on the wrong side of with your actions, because kids no not responsibility or, often, guilt.

So, life quickly devolves into a stress-filled negotiation with these…minions. You learn to be strong and firm and stress to the point of exhaustion and none of it changes the way they behave. You spank and take stuff away and scream and listen to screams and fights and tattling and all the while you wonder why you put yourself through it.

Because you love them. They are the part of you that remains when you are gone. They are meant to be the best of you, even if they start out as the worst. They grow into adults and, hopefully, remember the time you had with them as some of the best days of their lives.

Some Thoughts:

1. The phone is still trashed. I’m trying to figure out the problem, but I believe I’ll need to go to the Verizon store tomorrow–after I go to Walmart to figure out if the fact that I purchased it at Walmart makes a difference. It turns on for a while and then drains immediately. I don’t feel safe making a 22 hr road trip with that phone.
2. After watching Amy Sedaris and listening to her brother, David, I am very interested to know what the rest of the Sedaris clan is like.

I have an Iphone. This is the first phone I’ve bought from Apple and twice now the darn thing has stopped working, claiming that a fully charged battery is dead. I know it is a software error; some miscommunication between parts of the device. I read about it on the Apple support site as well as blogs on the subject. However, my knowledge is useless when it comes to the hermetically sealed products developed by the technomagi at the Apple research department. You cannot open anything Apple without incurring a visit from the secret service, so while my often failing Droid X was a POS, I could tear out the battery for a hard reset. I can’t do that here, and that is where my story begins.

One of my handful of male friends called me and asked if I wanted to come over and hang. I said yes and had him text me his address (because I can remember nothing and I am tech dependent). Moments later the text came in and the phone shut down. It went in that bam, bam order. I plugged it in the charger and finished up dinner with the kids. Afterwards I checked the phone and it was completely dead.

It remains dead.

The toughest part of this transition to a totally wireless world is understanding what to do if your phone fails. I don’t have a back up, so without my phone I cannot reach anyone. That doesn’t mean it is time for a Casa-Talislegger home invasion. It means I couldn’t go see a friend, because I had no idea where to go or how to tell him I didn’t have a phone. So, I ended up stuck at home with angry kids and a whole lot of disappointment.

 

I could use a burner phone right about now.

Still at a bit of a loss for words. I need to find them soon, less the meager writing talent dry up and blow away. I’m on the verge of starting movie reviews under the perspective screen name of B-Reel. It has a hop hop feel to it and is clever to boot–or corny. I’ll keep thinking about that one. Anything to keep me from thinking about this grief stuff. When I lost my father it took me a good year to actually accept the fact that he hadn’t simply gotten on a bus and rode away. I kept looking for him on busses but never found him. I’m certain now that he is gone, but that understanding was a long time in the making.

I’ll probably end up doing what I do best–throw money at the problem. The office isn’t finished and the kids room needs curtains. I can handle that; keep my arms moving with the labors of love as I prepare to step slowly into that pool of work waiting for me. I’m sure there is even a high degree of organizing I could be doing. There is all sorts of stuff I can fall back on to get my head and emotions back to centre.

I just need to figure out how to move towards one of them.

My wife had two fathers. The first was by blood and marriage and he lived a good long life. The marriage failed and years later his Parkinson’s Disease took his life. We mourned his death not much more than a year ago, 2.4.12. Today her second father died suddenly leaving all of us shocked and unable to understand how fragile life can really be.

Au (a way of saying uncle in Lao) suffered what appears to be a brain hemorrhage and died this afternoon. He was healthy. He was planning to drive to Colorado to surprise my wife on her vacation. I cannot say what caused the aneurism, but I can say that it shocks me to the core. I felt invincible as a teen; less so now, but I never before imagined that there could be that tiny killer inside of me that could rip me from this life so suddenly. Eventually I will be able to process what happened and effectively deal with the loss. I can say this about the man: I lost my stepfather at 12 and until I met Au I never had a male role model who believed in me, respected me, and loved me.

We tend to define ourselves by our accomplishments. That could mean what we do, how much money we have, or who loves us. I feel like the definition of who we are has nothing to do with those things. I think the definition of an individual is about who we inspire. Au’s love inspired me to be everything I could be for the family. I will miss his voice, his smile, his jokes, and most of all, his love.

The Aaron Hernandez case highlighted some of the difficulties that NFL teams face in investing in people who are entirely unscrupulous if talented players. The Hernandez gamble backfired leaving at least one dead and a team trading back jerseys so fans can erase the memory of 81 and start fresh. That is the Patriot Way. Who are we kidding here? Since the Belichick, winning is the Patriot Way, but the loss of both TE’s puts that in jeopardy.

I’m an ardent Jet fan and looking at the rest of the division I have to believe the team has a legitimate divisional crown shot now. The Patriots will be a tough 9-7 if Brady can sustain a passing game with no receivers. The Jets will run first and put up decent numbers so long as Sanchez is out of the way. The Bills will still stink, leaving the Dolphins as the team to look to as the wildcard. I don’t know who the Dolphins are or who they will be behind second year QB Ryan Tannehill.

So, can the Jets make the playoffs? Yes, because they have to. They have to in spite of Sanchez. They have to, because if they don’t Coach Ryan is gone, and I’m not ready for that yet.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. The Paula Deen fallout continues. She seems to me to be a target–a touchstone or even a talisman for our current feelings about racism. We want to believe we are past it so we shun anyone (anyone who isn’t too powerful) who has even the slightest perception of being racist. 
2. Haven’t seen a big screen release of a stand up comic since Eddie Murphy. Is Kevin Hart the new Murphy?

I’ve been coaching youth sports for a few years now and everything I read and hear from other coaches and professionals points to the idea that the kids are supposed to be playing for fun. Winning is not the objective at all. This is reinforced in the leagues I participate in by not even keeping score in most cases. In basketball the scoreboard isn’t even turned on until the 8-9 level. It is shut off once the score reaches a 20 point disparity. The kids aren’t supposed to care about winning, or awards, or accolades, but they do. It feels schizophrenic to tell kids from the time they are born that winning doesn’t matter and then sit them down in front of a TV or in a stadium where it is immediately apparent that winning is all that matters. I don’t think the problem is introducing kids to professional athletics. I think the problem is not being upfront about the value of winning and losing.

People like Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs, and Stephen King are only successful thanks to the fortitude they built through failure. Jordan even made a commercial about it. When we remove the specter of loss we remove the opportunity for victory and take away the very sense of competitive closure that is necessary for kids to grow to appreciate competition. If you give everyone an identical medal you might as well give no metal at all, because it limits the meaning to ‘I participated in a sport!’

They have uniforms and photos for that.

Some Thoughts:

1. Not spending a lot of time being an intellectual means not having very much to write about.
2. Cold Justice creator Dick Wolf found the two most attractive competent female criminal specialists he could and slid them into pantsuits in order to create his new show, Cold Justice. The real question is: How old is Dick Wolf?!
3. Been watching Perception where the lead character has delusions. The main delusion is of a woman he met years ago. This season that woman, Dr. Newsome, is part of the show as the real person and the delusion and the love triangle is between those three. Wow. Crazy does work on TV.

Sometimes being lazy is important. You cannot go 1,000 MPH for 10 years without that taking a serious toll on your mind, body, and spirit. Likewise you can’t hit full stop without slowing down first. As I tear into yet another slice of Cotsco lemon cake, I realize I’ve hit full stop. I’m happier for it. I took the time to let the batteries wind to empty and now I need them to wind up again.

The trick is to build up slowly. If I launch into full work mode then the best I can expect is a dead start, like a car that has idled for too long. In truth I want to spend the month of July revving up for August and the month of August getting up to full speed. I might’ve been a Porsche when I was younger but these days I’m a 4 door sedan.

Some Thoughts:

1. Miley Cyrus is not a sex symbol. Neither are the Olsen twins nor is Amanda Bynes. Being wealthy, legal, skinny, and blonde doesn’t automatically qualify you for sexy status. The fact that we continue to behave as if it does is a real testament to how ingrained this ideal is into the American culture.
2. We had our first Haboob of the season last night. My driveway looked like a dust swell this morning.
3. Under the Dome is basically unrecognizable t this point. I think I will enjoy it more if I stop trying to make it something it isn’t: An awesome Stephen King story.

My eldest asked to have his own room. Part of me is ecstatic to see him growing into a young man and the rest of me is terrified to see him grow up. He won’t be my little boy for long. So when he said he wanted his own room I tackled it the way I do most parenting situations. I said no, then I thought about it for a while, and finally I figured out a way to throw money at the problem.

I realized that his first initial, R, is that of my favorite DC hero, Robin. It gave me a design element to work off of and a way to deflect the emotion of this major step forward into a design project he and I can work on together and be really happy about. The fact of the move is my boy is getting older and wants his own space. He attributes the move to a need to sleep in total darkness (absent night lights), something that won’t happen with his two younger brothers sharing a space with him. I know it is more than that. I know he wants his privacy on occasion and he doesn’t get that opportunity with dem franchize boys  hanging off his bed railing. My wifey thinks the whole thing is folly and he’ll give up on the idea of his own space pretty quickly. She challenged him to sleep in the perspective room for one month alone to see what would happen. He agreed and moves in tomorrow.

30 days of anything is a challenge. I’m looking forward to see how the boy handles his.

Some Thoughts:

1. The beautiful thing about a new month is a clear calendar that presents 30 straight days to form new habits. In honor of the wife’s challenge I am relaunching a challenge to myself. 30 days of exercise. Lets see how it works.

The film Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close opens with a monologue that supposes there  are more people alive now than have died in the entirety of human history. The character goes on to suggest there will eventually be no place left to bury all the bodies. It set me to thinking about the dead, and the living and the matter that composes us all. For much of early humanity our dead were returned to nature–buried or burned or set to sea or any combination of these things. Few were entombed in such a way that their matter could not escape. Whereas the film wonders whether or not we will have space for the dead, I wonder if all the matter that composes the dead will eventually limit our ability to create the living.

Call it a fool’s postulate, but if matter can neither be created nor destroyed and the Earth’s matter is finite, burying people in the way we do limits the amount of renewable matter that can be used to create life. It doesn’t necessarily mean that eventually we’ll run out of matter–everything being consumed by the human form being locked into these canisters of the dead and stored away like so much dried goods. It means that matter intervening with earth in the form of asteroids and other space debris will at some point become the primary matter component for all earth life.

I suppose that will make future generations aliens to our own planet.