Go Ask Daddy About Corporate Sponsors, Shopping Hygiene and Your Halftime Entertainment

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Stadiums: They ought to be named after dead guys or geographical fixtures.

That’s just my take. It’s in the Coach Daddy Almanac, chapter 11, section 2. Some corporate genius wondered aloud whether companies would shell out more cash for naming rights on the home field. I suppose the outfield signs weren’t enough.

Even the radio studio and sports talk email inboxes have corporate sponsors attached.

They even renamed Charlotte Motor  Speedway after a home improvement big box. It didn’t last long. And naming the Denver Broncos’ home field after an investment firm went over like raiders colors in a Rocky Mountain Super Bowl party.

Go Ask Daddy About Dinero, Pantalones y El Raton Mickey

EP

I’m lousy at this Spanish thing – and I get reminded all the time.

It doesn’t help a bit that I can order cheese enchiladas in Spanish. Or that I know enough to be flabbergasted at a kid’s word choice when he insulted a girl on Elise’s soccer team during a contentious road game.

No, my Spanish is so rudimentary I’d be better of acting out the sentence. The girls even have to help me out sometimes – with help from Dora.

17 Years Later, Plenty of Parenting Left to Do

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I hated when TV networks did it.

They’d roll the credits near the end of the NFL broadcast, to give thanks to everyone on the crew and declaring that “any rebroadcast of this telecast without the express written consent of the NFL is strictly prohibited.” Go stuff it, Dick Enberg. Kiss it, Bob Trumpy.

It ain’t over, for my team, at least I hoped. Because at that point, they were usually behind.

Even down two touchdowns with 42 seconds left, it ain’t over. There’s still ball to be played. It’s like that with parenting, too. Even when your kid is 17 – especially when your kid is 17 – there’s still much parenting to do.

Challenge: Me, in 5 Words, and Why

EP

My friend Tammie Brown of The Graying Chronicles challenged me to describe myself in five words.

The idea brought on the twitches. It’s that uneasy feeling I get when people cram file folders and binders into a tight backpack. (The idea of) paper/folder/binder cuts make my skin crawl.

The problem with a five-word challenge: I’m a multiples-of-three kind of guy.

That’s a thing. The whole three-posts-a-week, 6 words, hat-trick life suits me. A five-word challenge juts out like a hamburger in a hot dog bun. Like soccer on a football field. Like a price check at the dollar store. As they say in Stanly County, “It don’t fit.”

Go Ask Daddy About Inflections, Infractions, and the Voice of Garfield

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I’m at that golden age of 42.

It doesn’t feel magic. It doesn’t suck, either. Pretty much, I can handle most of what I could at 32. Only I feel it more at the end of the day. But it’s not what I expected. And I have only two months to figure out the secrets of the galaxy.

Ever read A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? In it, Douglas Adams says 42 was the answer to to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

He later said 42 was a joke. I thought I could still find the answer, at age 42. I have just less than two months left to figure it out. All I know now is that I can see better with my new glasses.

Go Ask Daddy About Space Ships, Marine Arthropods and Carbonated Cleanups

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Ever since I was a boy, the “what if” questions got me thinking.

Especially if thinking got me out of chores or homework. So when Amanda at the Miss Zippy blog postulated this week with “what if everyone ran?” it got me thinking. And avoiding chores.

What if everyone in the world decided to become runners? What if you had to wait in line at the greenway or the treadmill? What if you couldn’t swing a skinny trail runner without hitting fierce mama and her bobbing ponytail? Would we all be fit?

Would we all have shin splints?

Can an Ergonomic Pen Make You a Better Writer?

By MEP

Disclosure: I got this product as part of an advertorial.

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What’s up with writers?

We don’t write books or stories. We type them. We don’t even write notes – we send email. We don’t write checks – we use debit cards. Or online bill pay.

We don’t write. We type.

Are we typers instead?

5 For Friday: Go Ask Daddy About Cheap Textiles, Roman Bloodsports and Crooked Letters

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It’s Friday. Yes, that means Pizza Friday (for lunch and dinner, as it turns out this week), but it also means it’s time to answer the kids’ questions, great and small.

You ought to see the lineup. I have a couple that have inspired posts of their own.

I want to take a paragraph to thank everyone who contributed to, read or shared my first “6 Words” project this week. The response was incredible. It helped Coach Daddy to its best day, best week and best month for page views. I feel like making a cake, or something.

I feel like the city that just hosted the Olympics, or the Super Bowl, or the Bacon Festival. I hope you enjoyed your stay, and I hope you’ll stick around after the festivities are over. Or at least come back on vacation.

5 For Friday: Dudes Who’ve Moved In On My Turf

 

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Every dad must return to the mortal status at some sad point in his life.

My dad’s moment came the day he gritted out an F-bomb while driving a nail – and taking his thumb along for the ride – when I was a kid. I’d never heard anyone outside the playground say what I thought was the worst bad word ever.

I’ve reverted to mortal status with each of my girls, although I can’t pinpoint the exact time or date.

They know now I can’t lift a house. They know now I can’t wrestle an alligator. They know now I don’t know everything about everything. I can’t slam dunk. Or hit a grand slam. Or punt the ball to the moon.

😟 5 for Friday: Anxieties that struck me all at once in the high school drop-off line

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High school.

See, I’m not the dad who fussed too much in the weeks leading to my oldest daughter becoming a high schooler. Why? Well, the inevitability is a factor. It’s not as if I can keep her from high school (short of just not dropping her off).

Me keeping her home to watch Ghost Adventures with me wouldn’t make me any less old.

It won’t grind to a halt the tumbleweed of progress, and I’d have to tote her around town to her menial job five days a week. Dads don’t worry about such eventualities until they’re right on us, like a heart attack.

Or a bad rash gone rogue.