The Competitor

The more I watch her play soccer, the more I understand just how competitive my youngest child truly is.

Today, shoulder to shoulder, she repeatedly beat off a fast striker from the other team, held her away from the net, stripped the ball, and sent it back where it came from.

Playing defense, as I have often noted, lacks glory. You rarely score goals or gather the accolades of your teammates.

But if you make so much as a single mistake, it can be fatal for your team's chances to win.

Today she played perhaps her best game ever, in the heat and the sun that followed a brief, light rainstorm the past two days -- weather she prefers.

In fact, she played such a physical game, repeatedly knocking her opponent cleanly off the ball, the parents of the other team were calling for fouls.

But she committed no fouls. There were no whistles, and no stoppages of play. There were no cards or foul shots.

It was all clean shoulder to shoulder contact and legal tackles.

She's learned her position well, mainly from her older brother, a pretty fair defender on his own right.

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Throwaway things

You know what the problem with memory is? At some point you have more you'd prefer to forget than remember.

Tonight, trying to erase the odor of the cat, who peed in a place I would prefer he not pee, I found an old movie ticket stub, a restaurant receipt, and a forgotten photo.

Each piece of faded paper told a story. These are stories I didn't necessarily care to recall.

Now I have to.

The problem with memories that involve people you care about or once cared about and thought also cared about you is that all of those old feelings come up again.

Luckily, since my main purpose was to get rid of the smell, I could spray the whole lot of them with chemicals and throw them away.

No more ticket stub, no more meal receipt, and let's just forget what was happening when that photo was taken.

All gone to the trash.

Smelly trash.

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Experimental Post

I'm thinking of changing this blog radically from what it has been, a quasi-journal with no real focus that is not searchable by Google, etc., into a new kind of place where I can explore my day to day dilemmas as a single male parent and unemployed journalist, open to all.

What do you think?

Here is my first attempt.

Tonight, I have this lovely boneless pork chop left over from last night's dinner. I want to reheat it but not dry it out.

My idea is to use some slices of fruit on-hand -- apple and Mandarin -- and wrap it in aluminum foil and heat in the oven for a bit. Hopefully this will add some moisture and maybe also taste.

Stay tuned. I'll let you know how it turns out...

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Columbus Day

It's Columbus Day, or Indigenous People's Day in San Francisco. Either way, as the kids say, "Yay! A day off school."

There's nothing much for them to celebrate beyond that, but that's one of the best things they ever get to celebrate -- a long weekend.

I took them to lunch at our favorite local burrito place.

At lunch and afterward, as their banter turned to some serious issues some of them are facing, we all devolved into hysterical laughter.

There really is nothing quite like being around teenagers to realize just how absurd life is. They are often scheming about how to get out of this or that commitment, or into this or that party or concert.

Things that we adults would consider serious issues, like which high school or college they will go to, they see as more like a Picasso painting, i.e., distortions of reality.

When we try to tell them they may regret some of the decisions they make now later, they say things like, "That makes no sense. If I came back from the future to now I'd make the same decision again, for the same reason."

In many ways, teens are living in the moment much more than us elders ever can do. Burdened by our past, and fears about our future, we fear them making mistakes. Mistakes they may regret.

At some point, we have to just let it be. Let it be. Let them go.

There's no other way for it all to play out, according to nature's plan.

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Applying for College

There's nothing quite like helping your kid fill out college applications to remind you just how little a series of numbers or checked boxes can tell you about a person's true nature.

These are institutions that want him (i.e., you) to go into debt at the rate of $30,000-50,000 a year, just for him to earn a four-year degree.

As we check off his race, ethnicity, SAT scores, classes he's taken, grades, family income, and on and on, it occurs to me that none of this in any tangible way tells his story.

We are just being reduced to comparatives. And if there is one thing I have learned as a journalist the past 45+ years, never reduce another person to a formula.

(Except, of course, if all you want is to sell that person something.)

I do not know what some admission officer somewhere might think about my son by scanning his application. I'm quite sure he will simply be sorted into one pile or another.

Unless they read his writing, where he reveals a bit of himself and his values, none of this other crap really matters at all.

Testing is broken and always has been. Character matters and always will.

I hope for him that someone in the chain of deciders understands character when it presents itself.

And that the match is a good one for him.

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