I love sports.
You know this if you’ve ever visited this blog. You also know that I’ll never paint my face at a game or defend a team’s honor with fisticuffs or waste any time watching ESPN SportsCenter. (Thanks, Disney.) No, my love of sports resides on a higher plane.
Give me rivalry and pageantry. Give me team colors, matchups, human stories.
Give me a team not expected to compete, in a state playoff game against a conference rival that’s taken them lightly. Watch them pronounce their arrival with spirited play and tenacity. That’s what the girls’ high school team did Thursday.
For 21 minutes, before the lightning came.
After waiting out rain delays in the hallways at Pfeiffer University, they told us all to go home. We picked it up where we left off on Friday. I wasn’t sure how it’d go. Elise said she tossed and turned all night.
The only thing as unnerving as facing a hated conference rival in the state playoffs and matching them punch by punch is perhaps to have an overnight to think about how you can sustain it.
So, Go Ask Daddy Weekend Edition – for times when you don’t get your Friday post done by Friday.
1. Can you drive faster?
Yes, I can. I used to.
I drove 5 mph over the speed limit. Once someone told me that cop mantra, “eight you’re great, nine you’re mine” (do cops really say that?), I used to do that. With age comes wisdom, sometimes. When you speed, you don’t have as much control. I like control.
I like control even more when I’m behind the wheel of a beat-up Pontiac.
I feel that I’m meant to be where I am at any given moment.
I feel the universe should grant me a cheeseburger for every 10 drivers who zoom around me with the stink eye only to have me catch up with them at the next traffic light. And then there’s the fate factor.
I feel that I’m meant to be where I am at any moment.
Think about this: What if you run a red light? You’re somewhere you weren’t intended to be. Does your life change exponentially? Maybe, maybe not. So, I drive slow, the speed limit, to secure my spot in the cosmos.
2. Do we have coyotes or wolves?
I wish I still had the picture – but it was definitely a wolf.
Elise and I saw two in the woods near the house a while back. One, an adolescent; the other, definitely an alpha male, with an enormous head! There wasn’t much woods back there. It’s amazing to imagine a wolf pack living in there.
It’s all cleared now, so maybe there’s a family named Wolf.
Ever heard of a coywolf? When wolves are shot and coyotes migrate and just one wolf falls in love with a coyote …
3. Could you wear short shorts and leggings to school together?
Another seemingly simple question wrought with symbolic meaning.
Let’s take these clothing items one at a time. Short shorts rock it in country music videos and Hardee’s commercials. In school, exposure of the lower 15% of the female buttock doesn’t rock it.
Leggings (or yoga pants) on soccer mom’s at Harris-Teeter in the middle of a work day become works of art. Form-fitting pants on a teenager at school, not so much.
Enacting bans against these and also spaghetti-strap tops because boys are “hormonal” and can’t possibly learn with girls in comfy clothing around them? This is not a girl’s fault.
I hear the argument for decorum in banning revealing clothes from school. The reason, though? Enacting bans against these and also spaghetti-strap tops because boys are “hormonal” and can’t possibly learn with girls in comfy clothing around them?
This is not a girl’s fault. And it seems to propagate a theory that boys can’t control themselves and girls represent nothing but temptation.
Leggings, though, leave little to imagination as far as a woman’s anatomical shape.
Pairing short-shorts and leggings would reduce partially each of the concerns. Leggings under short shorts take away the visible butt flesh. Short shorts over leggings remove, partially, the reveal of the female form. But do two wrongs make a right?
I’m just glad you girls don’t wear sweatpants with words across the buns.
4. How many keys are on a saxophone?
A saxophone has 23 keys and two speaker holes. These help you hit the high notes.
I’d estimate my beat-up sax had no more than 21 working keys at any given time. Back in 1983, when I first learned to play sax, that thing was a relic. Today it’s prehistoric. And Grace will play it next year in band.
The luster-dulled, ill-working sax fit me perfectly.
Music fueled my heart then, as writing and coaching today.
I took zero private lessons. I didn’t memorize scales, but busting my chops to replicate a Charlie Parker riff. I sat between pieces or before class started fingering my way through those riffs, hearing the pads open and close on the horn, to music only I could hear.
Music fueled my heart then, as writing and coaching today. I write and coach with a couple of broken keys, too.
5. How many carbs are you supposed to have?
I’m worried I’ll go low on carbs. It’s not good for a diabetic, you know, to go low. Steady influx of biscuits and burritos, that helps. I’ll kill at least a fistful or two of trail mix if I’m feeling like Mr. Good Body.
There’s something called the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (I bet they don’t play cool music in that office). They say carbs – the good ones come from sweet potatoes, carrots, leafy green veggies and the like – should make up 45 to 65% of total daily calories.
CalorieKing.com suggests I should consume 1,800-2,000 calories daily.
It also suggests I should weigh no more than 154 pounds.
What a government conspiracy, pocked with confusing math. Mostly confusing math.
Just a dad ... 
Great interview! Sorry I have been MIA… I have had a crazy life for the last few months and my summer is shaping up to be just as wild. Hope you are well.. 🙂
Hope you’re doing well, Courtney, and that you’ll have time to write soon! Thanks for stopping by.
Reading some of these questions, like the ones about if you *can* wear shorts with leggings and how many carbs are you *supposed* to eat, and knowing that your daughters asked them is… Painful. I can feel myself wincing, cringing, my chest tightening, and a flood of complicated emotions surging up all at once. How much I hate and despise the culture (and the market) that leads to the distortions, misbeliefs, untruths, and outright lies that start insinuating their way into vulnerable places so early in life. It’s impossible for me to tease apart my own trauma from the milieu, and I’m the least objective person on the topics of body image and nutrition, but I’d say, “Good for you,” for remaining both grounded and skeptical.
I hadn’t even considered that angle, Lulu. I’m grateful that my girls don’t adhere to others’ opinions about their body image, and I suppose the nature of my answers demonstrates how we feel about it.
You’re so right about the attack on our girls’ image, at early ages. There’s a fierceness in these girls and others around them that give me hope that such distortions, misbeliefs, untruths and outright lies won’t be so long for this world.
I’m glad that there are parents and coaches out there like you promoting balanced, wholehearted values that go beyond appearance, perfection, and fulfilling what others expect. That fierceness doesn’t come out of thin air!
Thanks Lulu. All we can do as parents is help set the scene for kids, and get out of the way. The discoveries need to be on their own.
Thank you for the song. Thank you for the video about coywolf. Shorts don’t have to show the asscheek. The other day, a manager caught someone wearing sweatpants and taking an employee survey. She decided to refrain from coaching until the next day. I still drive 5 or so over on the freeway, but do the posted speed in town. It is hilarious to meet a speeder at the stoplight. Sometimes I even wave, depending on the douche level when they passed. Wow. It is a huge change from 5 or so years ago when some other driver and I would “play”…our speeds would range close to 90 mph on the highway. Not cool. Carbs are also fruits and veggies, yum. With the exception of pizza and alcohol, i can resist the others.
Can’t imagine how Elise felt…ugh. No sport is worth throwing punches over, unless it is boxing…and you are one of the fighters…but then I never totally understood boxing…Thanks for listening to the ramble…and thanks for answering most interesting questions.
Glad you liked that Bird song. It’s one of my favorites. I couldn’t find the solo I memorized. I can hear it in my head, but don’t now what the song is.
They weren’t literal punches! Only figurative. They faced the top team in the conference, one they’d played tough but hadn’t beaten and hardly ever scored on. And they put them on their heels for more than a half of spirited soccer until finally breaking down in a 6-0 loss.
That was hard! Just watching the girls’ effort. Seeing Elise as the final whistle blew, ending her high-school career. Emotional for sure.
You’re hilarious! I love reading your posts….and those kids…whatcha gonna do? I’ve raised two, so I can relate!
Thanks Sue! Without the kids, this would be a food blog, and not even a good one at that. You know what kids bring to the table – or rather, what they take from it.
“Music fueled my heart then, as writing and coaching today.” Ten years of violin lessons and playing through most of college helped me connect to music when I was younger. If only my life hadn’t been so hard back then, I might not have burned out. I still listen to music every day and often sing along. At some point, I’ll have to get my violin back out and play. It’s been too long. I’m glad your sax will be played on once again.
I thought music would be my life, Sue. Music’s a wonderful addition to our learning. It can be an escape.
It can also be a grind. I saw the difference between a band with every member who wanted to be the best ever, and one that treated it as just another class.
Nothing wrong with the latter, unless you feel the music more deeply.
Music’s part of my everyday, and I have a strange love/hurt relationship with it. I’m finding my way around that, though.
I hope you’ll write about playing your violin again. It amazes me what comes back naturally after time away. It also amazes me how much I lose, and how weak my embousure has become over the years!
Music is my air so I always enjoy your posts that include snippets and bits of music that flavor your life. That’s actually a favorite song of that genre for me. I have a tendency toward lead foot (or as my sons like to call it “driving my Escape like it’s a tank”) but have noticed the older I get, I’m much more careful and watchful as a whole because age teaches us that accidents are called accidents for a reason.
I always find it interesting when anyone puts the impetus at controlling young men’s hormones on the girls, like somehow the manner in which they dress is asking for trouble or unduly influencing someone. In my experience, as the mother of 3 now over-18 sons…girls could be dressed in nuns’ habits and it wouldn’t matter. I think, as a society, we need to remember to make everyone accountable for their own actions, rather than choosing to lay the blame on some wayward spaghetti strap. If we raise our boys to become men who respect women, who understand that NO means NO, to have some impulse control, then that takes care of the issue, in my book. Again, just my 2 cents. Nebraska says hi 🙂
I like that Charlie Parker recording, Nikki. It’s a familiar song, and you can recognize his style in his rendition.
I’m glad that when my girls began to watch my speed, I had it in check. “Mom gets us to school quicker,” they say, though, and moan when I don’t run yellow lights.
I was a boy. Girls were so mystifying. Not only during shorts season, but, geez, in the winter. It had as much to do with their hair and their thoughts and that they smelled like Christmas.
I managed to concentrate in language arts, and never got in trouble for not keeping my hands to myself.
Hi Nebraska.
Carbs used to be the be all and end all of the Diet Pyramid. Now, it’s all about moderation (as it should be) with protein playing a much larger part. I know, from personal experience, that carbs in the morning will put me to sleep mid morning (10am-ish). Yogurt and fruit (strawberries, banana) and I’m good till lunch.
Way to field ghat question about tights. While you raise girls secure in their self image I’m tryin to raise boys who won’t be the “hormonal, distracted” ones onjectifying women. Here in Canada I drive 10 over the posted limit on the highway. But that’s only 3 in American dollars 🙂
Thanks Eric – tons to say on the subject. Modeling goes a long way. My dad appreciated a woman’s beauty; he’d not sink to levels of catcalls and other displays of disrespect.
Gotta love that exchange rate!
I have heard of the coywolf, but had no idea that it was as long ago as 1919 that those bad boys fell in love. I thought it was quite recent.
Hope you’re getting in some rain free soccer this weekend!
I’d never even heard of them, Deb. They’re nature’s love children (like mules and that tiger/lion hybrid. That’s real, right?)
The high school girls played last week in driving rain before lightning interrupted their playoff match. They resumed the next day, and help up that momentum for a while, but lost 6-0 in round two, to their hated conference rivals. How’s it up there?
what does calorie king know anyway?!
i question the very existence of calories, beth – have you ever really seen one? #GovernmentConspiracy
Up here, on a major highway, you’re pretty safe as long as you don’t more than 20 km over the speed limit. That’s generally keeping up with the flow of traffic. I’m always under and constantly passed with stink eye in my general direction. You can be my co-pilot any time – Drive to Arrive I say!
I don’t think we have all these clothing and dress code issues up here. You’re more likely to get sent home for wearing the wrong team hockey jersey. I don’t think Canadian girls would be so ready to be told we can’t wear those pants because Jimmy here is all hot and bothered and can’t count any more. Like please Jimmy, let’s practice counting by listing all the other ways you’re an ignorant douchecanoe.
The cloths of the 80’s have been flooding the racks at the stores and my worst nightmare as a mother of a teenage girl who love it! She’s smarter than I am and figured out real fast that beautiful and “sexy” can be done without bare bellies and showing off shoulders or ones bum.
Are they getting the Choose Life shirts yet? Oh wait, that’s 90s. You’re right, though, and she gives us hope, doesn’t she Tiff?