During the first month of school, when I start to lose my voice—which I inevitably do: allergies and all the talking—I actually have some videos to fall back on (because of all the remote teaching during COVID) and I realized that I've never posted them . . . and that I may never tell these stories again, as they are very particular to certain lessons; yesterday the seniors were working on the College Essay, something in which I am certainly an expert; the first thing we do is list our "great" accomplishments, and then we try to figure out how to discuss these accomplishments without sounding pompous or arrogant or didactic or annoying—college essay prompts set kids up to be annoying . . . and I also remind them that they are children, and they may not have any actual "great" accomplishments and they have to be generous and open and sincere— being nice to your parents is a great accomplishment, as is having a wonderful friend group, or asking someone out on a date, or learning to cook something—it doesn't have to be a perfect score on the SAT or straight As or athletic prowess or digging wells for homeless orphans in Nicarauga . . . and then I give them two techniques to use when writing about this accomplishment; they could either tell a solid story (I give them the Dan Harmon 8-step story template and focus on the heavy price-- if you don't have a heavy price it's just an anecdote) and then I present them with two true stories from my high school golf career-- STORY NUMBER ONE and STORY NUMBER TWO . . . and I ask them which one would make for a better college essay (I also tell them that one of these stories WAS my college essay) and we discuss which story is more appropriate-- there's usually some debate (but the second story was my actual college essay . . . though I am the villain, as there's much better lesson and there's a heavy price for my actions) but then I give the kids an alternate route-- if you don't have a compelling structured story about your accomplishment or passion, then I tell them to develop something symbolic-- and I show them The Story of the String Bag, in which I describe how this string bag incident is a metaphor for coaching, symbolic of what it is like to be a coach-- which is a much better way to discuss something than listing all your accomplishments, which sounds more like a resume-- and then I made the kids watch my amazing, incredible pickleball video, in which I execute an ATP and I told them how great I am at pickleball and I made them applaud for my shot, and then I told them that they should not have applauded for me and no one likes a braggart and that I am actually BANNED from discussing pickleball in the English Office and I explained that if I were to write a College Essay about pickleball, instead of focusing on my incredible skills and ability, I would talk about pickleball and the the relationship with my brother-- and how it gives us something to do together— my brother was the one who pressed the button at the pickleball place so that my ATP video would be recorded, and my brother is the one who taught me to play, and pickleball is something we can do together-- not all siblings have that . . . so I would write about what pickleball symbolizes, a way for me to get together with a family member-- not about how good I am-- and the kids understood this concept, and then, while I was recounting all these sports stories and trying to teach them how to NOT to sound like an asshole, I remembered a moment from when I played freshman football that would be perfect for a college essay, a symbolic moment—so I tried to explain this to my three college writing classes and I learned that most kids do NOT understand football at all; my hypothetical essay was about switching from soccer to football-- I was the fastest kid in 8th grade—but no one wants to hear about how fast you are, that's not an essay-- so i would write about how I decided to switch from soccer to football because it was the 1980s and football was what the cool kids played, so I thought it would be a great avenue for scoring with the ladies (despite my bowl haircut and feathery, never-been-shaved mustache) and because I was fast, the coaches put me at running back (they didn't let me play defense because I couldn't really tackle anybody) and I asked my students where you should run on a soccer field and they kind of understood this—that you're allowed to run wherever you want: into space, you can check to the ball, you can get wide, you can go forwards, etcetera . . . it's free range—but then I asked them where you run on a football field, and it was like pulling teeth; barely anyone understood the concept of a PLAY or a ROUTE . . . and literally no student had heard the concept of a hole, a numbered spot where you were supposed to run because people were blocking for you there—because when I started playing football, I had a soccer mentality and never ran to the correct hole and that would be what my essay would focus on, the difference between soccer and football-- and there was this one symbolic moment, when I actually saw my coaches jump for joy at what I did-- and I wasn't running with the ball, all I did was successfully execute my "Gap Read Down" assignment and properly block the defensive end instead of going out wide-- our fullback gained some yards and the coaches were ecstatic that I didn't fuck up again . . . after one season I had enough though, football was too rigid and practice was boring-- too much runng through all these plays-- and so I switched back to soccer because I loved the autonomy . . . it would be a great college essay, as long as the reader had some knowledge of sports (and my students do not have much knowledge of sports . . . it's wild to explain this stuff to them).
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Another Ordeal at Eagle's Landing
Today, I refereed three games in Monroe with Bill-- a grouchy old codger who is still running centers at age 80!-- and while there were a few moments of conflict . . . some disputes about player passes, some toxic masculinity amongst the three dudes coaching the Brick team, and a guy coaching his team on the spectating side of the field-- who Bill excoriated and relocated-- but still, this was a walk in the park compared to my second game yesterday, out at Eagle's Landing in North Brunswick (the location of my first game as a ref and also the setting my first fan fistfight . . . perhaps this field is cursed for me) when, with thirty seconds left in the half of a U-13 game, the goalie, a girl, and a player in the box had a small collision-- which looked like nothing-- until the offensive player, who was lying prone, started shrieking-- and when I jogged over and saw the injury, for a moment my brain couldn't process it and then I nearly puked-- a compound fracture between the knee and the ankle-- so the kid's leg looked like it was turned askew and had an extra bend in it-- yikes-- we called 911 and it took fifteen long minutes for the ambulance and the police to arrive-- they drove out on the grass field while we milled around-- and both coaches agreed to abandon the match-- not that we could even restart because there was no moving this child-- he was a trooper after the initial yelling and shrieking, which occurred when he turned and saw the injury-- but he did NOT want the EMTs touching his leg or moving him, so then a second ambulance came and I think that's the one that administers pain meds and such, and the poor kid was on the away team so he lived all the way down in Manchester, over an hour away-- but I assume they were goign to take him to a local hospital-- though our work was done once the game was abandoned, I hung out for a while at the site, because the two home coaches were brothers who graduated from East Brunswick High School, where I work, so we chatted about the state of high school to kill time while watching the medical crew do their work . . . and I'll tell you: I could not get that image out of my head yesterday and ast night, when I went to sleep-- I don't think I've seen anything like that since I was a little kid.
Reffing Inside Plato's Cave
I am finally home and drinking a cold beer after a taxing weekend: I reffed six games-- three on Saturday and three today-- and I worked three games as the center ref and two games as AR where the home team was running a serious offside trap, so I got some good experience calling various infractions, from the center and from the side-- and while I'm really starting to get the hang of things-- checking players in, keeping order during substitutions, calling fouls and restarts, and the various organizational duties of the ref, but I still haven't given out a yellow or red card yet and I haven't called a penalty kick-- but I'm ready to do so-- and this weekend, i worked with some veteran refs, including Rocco, an older Italian gentleman who condemns Venmo and only operates with cash and our one-armed assignor, who told a youngster who was nervous about his performance "the best ability is AVAILability"-- which is a fucking great old man statement; anyway, I've noticed that the difference between being a ref and being a coach is that when you're coaching, you are looking for reasons the ref should call a foul, but when you are reffing, you are looking for reasons to NOT call a foul: advantage, there was no contact, the player tripped over his own feet, the player's hands were against his body, little kids are just generally spastic, the ball is stuck in a pack of seven children and there's going to be random bumping without malevolence, a player tripped over the ball, etcetera . . . and there's definitely no way to get it all correct-- reffing is an exercise in futility, an exercise in unreliable narration-- but you have to be confident with your calls-- you can't reveal to the crowd and the players and the coaches that your perspective is limited, that you are at the mercy of your angle and your eyes and your old legs, you can't reveal that we are all residing in Plato's metaphorical cave, only perceiving the shadows of reality, not the actual truth, and your calls are just one subjective view among many, from one particular view of the field, your calls are not biased by rooting for one team or another, your calls are biased because you are a human, living within the flow of time, unable to stop it, run it back, rewind it, slow it time, look at it frame by frame-- this isn't TV-- and there's something very excellent and fun about this, you make a call and sometimes you nail it, and sometimes you wonder, and sometimes you get it wrong (and sometimes your AR corrects you) but you are outside, in the sun, watching sports and listening to passionate fans and players-- so, as a retirement job, it sure beats tutoring kids for the SAT or helping them write a college essay (plus, I got a shitload of exercise-- my feet hurt . . . also, if you bring any of this up during a game, I'll give you a yellow card for dissent).
Sentence of Guy
We returned from Naples, Florida late last night on Frontier Air-- which is most definitely a seat-of-your-pants budget-type airline . . . but though we were cramped, Frontier got my family there and back on time-- unlike my brother and his wife who are still stranded in Florida-- they were supposed to leave Sunday but their flight was canceled due to wind and all the Frontier flights were full on Monday night and they don't really have reciprocity with other airlines or give vouchers, so my brother and his wife are flying out on Tuesday night-- hopefully because Frontier doesn't fly on Wednesdays to Fort Meyers-- but though the flights were sketchy, my father's Celebration of Life service was a great success: my wife did an incredible job collecting pictures of my dad and made a comprehensive slideshow of his life, which I set to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, two of my father's favorite musicians and then several people spoke about my dad-- I led off and spoke about my dad's impressive career in corrections and what a privilege it was to work with him . . . I wrote up my dad's expert witness reports, and then I talked about how my dad, despite his incredible career as a progressive prison director and designer, always expressed how proud he was of me, despite the fact that I haven't accomplished anything near what he accomplished in his life, and then I threw in a few literary allusions because I'm a bombastic jackass, and so I mentioned Turgenev and The Great Santini and Biff from Death of a Salesman and touched upon that classic trope of the son trying to impress his father, usually to no avail, but that I never had to worry about that because my dad always sincerely expressed pride in whatever I accomplished, teaching, coaching, being a dad, playing sports, whatever-- and that gave me so much joy and confidence;
then my brother Marc talked about how my father was always there for him and so he missed his best friend and confidant;
then my older son Alex. who just turned 21, recalled a time when he was very young and thought his Poppy was the coolest old guy in the world and how he thought that his Poppy was called "guy" because he was the original "guy"-- he was THE "guy" and Alex remembered how when he was older and needed help for a Model UN event, Poppy set up a lunch with Alex and his friend who was an FBI agent and the agent explained all the things Alex needed to know;
then my younger son Ian, who is 19, described how strong-willed and stubborn my father was and then he described what his Poppy would do when he did something stupid and idiotic-- Poppy would ask Ian to "step into my office"-- and Ian remembered how annoyed he would get when he heard this, when he knew he was in for a lecture, but then he finished his speech by saying though the phrase "step into my office" annoyed him then, now all he really wanted was to hear my dad say it one more time;
then some of my father's friends spoke-- his consulting partner Tony Ventetuolo explained my father's awful sense of direction and recounted an anecdote about a bridge in Sioux City and then he had us close our eyes and imagine my father missing a two-foot putt and asked if we could hear him from above, yelling profanity from Heaven;
and Mr. Apgar donned a pair of reading glasses with the price tag still on them and told a slew of stories, from Cape Cod-- how my dad would go to the Christmas Tree shop and "borrow" a pair of reading glasses and wear them with the tag on so he could read the prices and how he was there when my dad told him how excited he was that Catherine and I were going to teach overseas and he was hoping we'd land in Italy or Switzerland or Spain and his reaction when he got the phone call and we were going to teach in Damascus and how they had to go to the Chatham bookstore the next day and look at a map to see exactly where that was and he talked about what a great golfer and competitor my dad was and some other things I can't remember--
so we crammed in my mother's condo for the long weekend and celebrated my father's incredible life and I was really proud of how well my children spoke of him and how they comported themselves all weekend, putting up with a bunch of old people reminiscing-- and amidst all the eulogizing and sadness, we also had to celebrate three recent birthdays: my mom just turned 80, I just turned 55, and Alex just turned 21.
Spring Break?
What Are the Odds?
I've spend an inordinate amount of my life on grassy fields-- playing soccer, coaching soccer, playing golf, hiking, walking the dog, etcetera-- but I've never spotted a four-leaf clover.
Epic Week But No Complaints
A long week . . . five days of teaching six classes and four preps, plus Back to School Night (and no more videos, we're doing it in person) but it's been a good week: Rutgers football won, Giants football "won" . . . but just barely, Ian went up 190 points on the SAT, Ian played really well in the tragic soccer loss against Middlesex . . . another ridiculous call-- this time a phantom PK and the Middlesex kid, who had been diving all game, kicked the ball while he was on the ground and HE got the call in his favor and then our goalie got knocked out of the way and another goal was scored and then another Middlesex kid took a dive and out player got his second yellow, so I'm glad I'm not coaching but Ian scraped the rust off from a summer of only tennis and actually looked fit and aggressive and his touch was excellent, and we had a delicious flank steak for dinner-- and you never know with flank steak, sometimes it can be tough, and I've got another episode of We Defy Augury out . . . we'll see if I can keep it up after this long week (and Garage Sale Day on Saturday . . . if I get the next episode out, I'm a podcasting hero).
Trip to Possumtown!
My wife and I took a road trip to the Possumtown Firehouse last night for what I thought was going to be a two hour CPR class-- I need to update my certificate for coaching-- but the course also included First Aid and the lady running the class was a bit disorganized and a bit tangential, so we were there from 6 PM until nearly 10 PM, learning about tourniquets and nosebleeds and impalements and all kinds of things that make me dizzy-- luckily there was a large couch in the very comfy Possumtown Volunteer Firehouse (the lady's dad was the chief) and this place really had small town firehouse character: a big TV and a kegerator and a soda machine that you could just open and take the soda out and a fish tank with some big fish in it (I watched these fish when the videos got too graphic about blood) and the class was quite intimate, just me, my wife, and a young dude-- it was kind of stream-of-consciousness, with lots of anecdotes from the teacher's EMT experiences and the main thing I learned-- which no other class was so blunt about-- was that you don't need to worry about breaking someone's ribs when you're doing CPR because they are CLINICALLY DEAD . . . once she put it that way, it assuaged a lot of my fears about pressing too hard or whatever, you're literally trying to resurrect someone when you're doing those compressions (and we always have an AED nearby when I coach, so hopefully that machine will do the trick . . . although if someone like me goes down, you'll need the razor in the accessory kit top deal with my excessive chest hair).
Tennis vs Soccer
I have coached soccer my entire adult life and can organize and arrange a practice for four to forty people in my sleep, but I am finding tennis to be a different animal entirely-- practice is much more chaotic and disorganized: there are challenge matches going on, and they end at various times; there are drills and fun games; there are balls EVERYWHERE; there's a court for our absolute beginners, who are just working on hitting the ball; plus, I try to work with some kids individually on particular shots . . . and there's no culminating scrimmage to end things-- practice start out organized but slowly fall apart as different matches and drills end at different times, so then you can end practice with whacky large group games like "around the world" and "lob doubles touch the net or fence" challenge and maybe some fitness . . . I really like coaching tennis so far, but I'm learning to go with the flow a bit and I can't wait for our first scrimmage to see the kids in action.
Tennis and Scooping
Weird tennis match this morning-- I hurt my quad last week playing soccer, so I promised myself I wouldn't run too hard at tennis this morning because I need to stay healthy for coaching tennis, and I played a good player this morning, Jonathan, a skilled and fit Asian guy in his thirties who has played a lot of tennis and I was hoping he'd kill me so I wouldn't get competitive and hurt my leg, but in between killer shots, he made some unforced errors and near the end, I was ahead 7-6 but he tied it at 7-7 and we had to play a tiebreaker-- and my leg was really starting to get tender, but I went ahead 3-0 in the tiebreaker, only to finally lose in the end 7-5 . . . and the whole time I was trying not to run down drop shots or get into long rallies and I'm just glad I survived without injury-- though I really could have beaten him if I was at full strength . . . and then I got bagels for my family and my wife gave me a very complicated order involving a "scooped out" bagel, a term which I never heard but seems to be something they are familiar with at the bagel shop.
Another Saturday, Another Tennis Match Against Barry
The Saturday morning tennis schedule has gotten weird-- people are injured or have dropped out, so I played Barry again this morning-- and while I was always ahead handily and beat him 8 - 4, he's a tough old sonofabitch-- he's 66!-- and he was hitting his serve well and some weird angle shots that had me running back and forth-- but I actually hit a few aces; I got to the net and never missed an overhead; and while my cut backhand is still erratic, I was hitting my two-hander deep with some topspin-- I was working on just turning my back to start the stroke . . . I was struggling a little with his serve, I kept hitting floaters back-- and at the start, I hit a few shots without enough spin, so they floated out on me-- I've got to be confident with my follow-through . . . but I definitely got a confidence boost from my first day of coaching, I'm mired in tennis drills and practice plans, etcetera and it can only help my game (perhaps).
Late Winter Update
I've been negligent in writing sentences for the past couple of days, perhaps because it's that time of the school year: the long haul before Spring Break . . . there's no end to the learning in sight; my students have just handed in their third Rutgers college writing essay-- so one more to go-- but I have to grade fifty of these six-page synthetic behemoths . . . not much in the way of news; we're watching Goliath and All of Us Our Dead; I'm reading Live by Night, Dennis LeHane's historical tale of rum-running in Tampa and a hysterical book of essays by Samantha Irby; I ate split pea soup for lunch twice this week because Catherine took it out of the freezer thinking it was verde sauce for enchiladas; there's still snow on the ground, which is good for pulling a sled backwards; apparently the weather is going to warm up soon and spring will be in the air . . . tennis season is right around the corner and I'm certainly nervous about coaching it at the varsity level (and coaching both my children) so things will pick up around here soon enough, hopefully in a good way-- in the meantime, my wife has told me that I've been slacking on doing the dishes, so it's time to get to it (and I have a new phone, which is weird-- it's a OnePlus 8 (Never Settle!) and the screen sort of wraps around the body and you can't insert an SD card and things seem smaller than my old phone, but I'm sure I'll get used to it . . . and if I don't, well then I deserve it, because I tossed my Redmi 9 in the washer).
Soccer IQ
If you coach soccer, play soccer, or a interested in soccer tactics (but you don't want to lose your mind looking at inscrutable charts and diagrams in a book like this) then I highly recommend Dan Blank's Soccer IQ . . . it's chock full of pithy coaching tidbits (including lots of stuff that you probably already intuitively know but did not know how to explain to players) and simple diagrams and concepts and tactical philosophy boiled down to practical application-- I'm sure I'll read both volumes several times and I've already recognized that our team often plays "the impossible pass" and tried to explain how to remedy this.
Not My Fault (For Once)
Yesterday, we attempted to play an off day JV game (so that we could take a couple of younger varsity players-- we're low on numbers) but ten minutes into the game we got slammed by torrential rain-- so we hightailed it to the bus and drove back to Highland Park (from Middlesex of all places-- we were lucky not to get caught in the floodwaters) and the kids wanted to get dropped off in the Middle School lot because there is some shelter there from the rain-- so I directed the bus driver there, even though my car was parked on the other side of the school, on the street near the front of the building-- so I walked through the rain, carrying the ball bag and my giant coaching bag-- the thunder and lightning exploding around me, and when I got to Fifth Avenue, I couldn't find my van-- I wandered up and down the road, at first wondering if I forgot where i parked and then wondering if the car had been stolen-- but who would steal my disgusting and disgraceful van?-- and then I saw a blue Mazda and wondered if my wife had switched cars, but it wasn't our Mazda-- and by that time I was so wet that my phone wouldn't work-- so I couldn't call Alex or my wife-- and it just kept downpouring, so I got under a tree and managed to dry my phone off enough to call and I found out that Alex had taken the car home when he got caught in the rain at varsity practice-- in order to save his laptop-- and my wife had told him to do this but no one told ME that he took the car-- Alex thought Catherine communicated this to me and my wife thought that Alex had told me . . . so I was really wet and really pissed off when Alex came to get me . . . but it was only water, so I got over it-- and Alex then took the van to some sort of junior prom event, so there was more getting in and out of the car in the rain-- and I slept from 6-7 PM and then from 8 PM to 5 AM-- I was wet and tired, and then when I got in the van this morning to go to work, I soaked my pants-- the seat was sopping wet-- but I didn't feel like changing my pants-- I just threw a towel on the seat-- and first period my pants were very noticeably wet, which my class enjoyed-- but I put a small fan behind me, and that worked and now my pants are dry and my underwear is only a little moist.
The Queen's Gambit is a Classed-up Cheesy Sports Movie
I thoroughly enjoyed the Netflix mini-series "The Queen's Gambit," even as I recognized sports trope after sports trope; it's a Cinderella story and this scene pretty much summarizes the film:
the protagonist, an orphan named Beth, learns to play chess in the basement of the orphanage with her first mentor of many-- the janitor Mr. Shaibel-- so you get the Rocky-style gritty determinism and training, but, of course, Beth is an intuitive player-- her brain is so active she sees the pieces move on the ceiling . . . she has to resort to tranquilizers and alcohol to calm her busy mind . . . and she passes through many obstacles, suffers setbacks, and finally-- with a sequence of mentors (including the archetypal wise Black lady) she finally learns the Russians' secrets-- they are collaborative-- they study games together and everyone plays-- they advance in chess as a nation . . . but, in the nick of time, her scrappy American friends come to her aid and though she once suffered abysmal defeat, it seems that her brilliance-- which she could only summon with tranquilizers-- can also be bolstered by cooperation and friendship and coaching . . . it's a heartwarming feminist underdog tale that made me weep like I was watching "Hoosiers"-- the acting and imagery is first rate, and the color palette almost feels like "Madmen," it's just as much fun to look at the outfits as it is to root for Beth . . . the writers decided NOT to explain very much about chess at all, and this works-- if you know the game, you might think the speed of play is unrealistic (and it would be good to revisit Jim Belushi's SNL Chess Coach skit) but to watch people actually play chess is laborious, and as an added bonus, now my kids want to play some chess (I destroyed Alex last night, just crushed him right through the middle).
9/11 and the Pandemic
The current Covid pandemic and 9/11 are probably going to loom large in my lifetime-- the significant events that will leave their mark on my consciousness-- and I feel the same about both of them:
1) I've experienced both events from an unusual perspective . . . I was teaching in Damascus when the planes hit the towers, and I am coaching and teaching through this pandemic;
2) I feel like both events are common occurrences that Americans haven't normally dealt with . . . pandemics have been the norm throughout history, and most developing countries (including Syria) still deal with deadly infectious diseases on a daily basis-- malaria, typhoid, yellow fever river blindness, chikungunya, etc-- and many countries outside the US cope with plenty of terrorism . . . so the pandemic and terrorism were both events where we joined the rest of the world . . . I wish my looming significant event was Woodstock but that's not how it's going down.
PPE Paradox
This is what I've learned from coaching with a mask on: when I project my voice while wearing a mask, I get a sore throat . . . and when I get a sore throat, I'm not supposed to go to school-- as this is a symptom of COVID . . . but I'm required to wear a mask while I'm teaching/coaching . . . it's a PPE paradox!
Refrigeration and Sanitation are Winners
If you want to appreciate modern life-- and I'm talking about modern life, not our post-modern lives on the internet-- then you can either read Robert J. Gordon's fantastic and comprehensive book The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War or you could go without a refrigerator for three weeks.
I've done both. I prefer the Gordon book.
These are the big five:
1) electricity
2) urban sanitation
3) chemicals and pharmaceuticals
4) modern travel (the internal combustion engine and plane travel)
5) modern communication
We just got our new fridge yesterday, and it's amazing. Big, cold inside, and easy to shut tightly. It makes ice and preserves food. We got a Frigidaire because that's what Steve the Appliance Doctor recommended. Our old fridge had a bottom drawer freezer and he said those are the kiss-of-death for the compressor. It easy to leave them cracked open, and then the compressor has to work really hard to push the cold air up to the fridge.
Of course, this was a first-world problem, as we had a small refrigerator/freezer in the basement. But you had to descend a flight of stairs, and really bend down to get to the tiny vegetable drawers. And no ice.
Refrigeration and air-conditioning are miracles that allow you to enjoy all the internet can provide. Without them, you couldn't be inside your house in the summer. Grid electricity and urban sanitation are particularly nice when its 95 degrees and you are holed up because of a pandemic.
We've also been living without an upstairs show-- contractors are replacing the bathroom tiles. We had a leak. So we've all been using the shower in the basement . . . we'll appreciate all our urban sanitation once we get that back.
These technological advances have allowed for humans to enjoy incredible population density and incredible ease of global movement. Population density creates the most vibrant and creative places in the world: cities. The freedom to travel allows us to move from city to city, like little gods of the planet.
The cost of this density and ability to travel is the pandemic.
So it looks like we're going to need a technological solution to COVID-19. If you don't think so . . . if you've got delusions of naturally reaching herd immunity, stop watching random people on YouTube and listen to Short Wave: Why Herd Immunity Won't Save Us . . . it's a credible and vetted science podcast that explains what we know about COVID, herd immunity, and Sweden's experiment.
In other news, I can't wait until the contractors are done. It's hard for me to read, nap, blog and otherwise be lazy when people are working so hard in my house (I did work pretty hard at soccer practice this morning, coaching in the heat with a mask on, but that was only for three hours).
Mini-Thursday is Monday in Disguise
We have off this Wednesday for Yom Kippur, and since I'm not Jewish, I don't have to worry about fasting and atonement. It's just a day off. Because of this mid-week break, I declared to my wife this morning that it was "mini-Thursday."
A cause for celebration.
I explained that tomorrow (Tuesday) is mini-Friday, and that our day off (Wednesday) is a mini-weekend, and then it's normal Thursday, normal Friday, and the regular two-day weekend. An excellent week (or two weeks mini-weeks).
My wife did not buy this. She told me that it was Monday and there was no getting around it. I ignored her, and it cost me.
I got it into my car to go to school, and all the check engine lights came on. One said "TRAC OFF," another cryptically informed me "VSC" and the regular engine block light came on. Then the temperature gauge starting floating from past the H to below the C. Back and forth, back and forth.
This is not the kind of stuff that should happen on mini-Thursday.
I got to school and found out we had a faculty meeting. I had no idea. And I had to coach a game after school. There are never meetings after school on Thursday, but apparently mini-Thursday is fair game. I talked to my boss and we agreed that I would stay for a little bit and then race home to coach soccer.
I ran over to the library on my free period, to pick up a couple of reserved books, but the library was closed. On Mondays it doesn't open until 10 AM. Most mornings it opens at 9 AM. But at least my car was driving fine, despite all the cautionary lights. I called my mechanic and made an appointment for Wednesday (the mini-weekend).
Before the faculty meeting, I ran to the library a second time. Then I watched an especially boring presentation about proctoring the PSAT (which I could ignore-- my son is taking it, so I am not allowed to proctor-- so sweet). Then I raced out of the meeting so I could get home to Highland Park to coach.
On Route 18, my van starting making a weird sound. It stalled out on the stretch of highway through New Brunswick, but I managed to get it going again. Then it stalled again on the hill up to Highland Park. I got it started but it was ugly. It stalled for a final time in the road in front of my house. I was trying to pull into my neighbor's driveway to turn it around, so the van was perpendicular to the road. I had to coach in twenty minutes. Some guy walking by helped me push a bit, but we needed more people. Something about the car smelled really bad. Something was burned out. My van was dying. On mini-Thursday! My son Ian showed up. He's wearing a sling (fractured elbow) so we put him in the driver's seat. We pushed more, to no avail. There was no power steering. Ian couldn't turn the wheel (with his one good arm). Then my son Alex showed up. This was manpower (kidpower?) to get the job done. We pushed the van into a parking spot on the street (facing the wrong way) and then unloaded the car of all the soccer equipment: balls, corner flags, pinnies, cones, my giant coaching bag, etc. We carried all the equipment down to the park for the game. It's lucky I live walking distance to the field. Most coaches would have been totally screwed.
My wife managed to get the car started and drive it to F&F Auto (highly recommended). She said it was about to stall the whole drive, but she caught all the lights. My team played poorly, and my son-- who was the hero of the game on Friday and scored the winning goal in overtime-- didn't get goal-side on a couple of key plays. Yuck. Friday he was a hero, but this was Monday kind of stuff.
I'm drinking a couple of beers now and pretending it's truly a (mini) Thursday night, but it's hard to get into the Thursday night groove. Too much Monday stuff happened. Hopefully tomorrow-- mini-Friday-- will have better karma.
Spotswood Redux
As far as coaching goes, I have a pretty sweet deal. I now coach my hometown JV team. The field is two hundred yards from my house (sometimes I forget the corner flags on the field and run down there the next morning to grab them). My children are both in high school now, one is a freshman and the other is a sophomore, and I am coaching the two of them (and many of their friends). I am lucky as a coach and as a dad. I know this probably won't ever happen again.Many years ago, I coached girls soccer at Spotswood High School with my friend and fellow English teacher Kevin. We would teach our classes at East Brunswick, then race over to Spotswood to coach. Now that I coach for my hometown, Highland Park, we occasionally play Spotswood. It's always nostalgic to head back there, as that's where I spent my formative coaching years. You never forget that stuff-- especially coaching high school girls. They are nuts (and far more civilized than boys).
Last Wednesday, we had an away game against Spotswood. It's always a good test for Highland Park, because Spotswood is out of our division and twice our size. So I was excited for the game. I also wondered if I would remember anyone-- even though I hadn't coached there for fifteen years.
While I didn't recognize any coaches or administrators, the fields were the same. Both the varsity and the JV took early leads, so it looked to be a nice afternoon. Then my younger son Ian-- who's barely 100 pounds and has been getting killed this year-- got tripped from behind and went flying. The ground was rock hard (lack of rain). I knew as soon as he hit that he didn't land well. His right arm crumpled as it hit the dirt. I assumed it was a bad break.
I jogged out to him-- the injured player jog is the worst jog in sports-- and found Ian was in a lot of pain. He also thought his arm was broken. The trainer checked it this way and that and thought it might be fractured. Then another trainer drove over in a golf cart, and also gave Ian a second inspection. In the middle of it-- I was kneeling on the ground and he was bending my son's wrist-- he looked at me and said, "Is your name Dave?"
I nodded.
"Didn't you used to coach here?"
Someone remembered me!
My mom was at the game, so she received the chore of taking him to the urgent care for x-rays (Catherine was at Back to School Night). They couldn't tell if his elbow was fractured and recommended an orthopedist. Ian went yesterday, and he's got a small fracture in his elbow. He's in a sling for two weeks.
After they carted him off the field, it was hard to coach the rest of the game (we did pull off a nice victory) but in retrospect, it was good to be there, in the thick of it. There's only a few more years of this, and I enjoy seeing all of it close-up and personal. I'm hoping he makes it back for the tail end of the season, but even if he doesn't, it was still great to coach some games where my kids were passing the ball to each other.
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