That Guy We Call Dad

You walk together, forever bound by an unbreakable kinship capable of moving mountains.

Doubting but teaching.

Failing but learning.

You are no longer what you want to be; you are what you must be.

Along the way, incapable of succeeding, you can only hope that what is good and kind and yielding is somehow a reflection of you.

Fear grabs hold and freezes certainty.

The only salvation is in the hope that, somewhere inside, you might be but a fraction of that person you are so afraid to ruin.

This Popcorn Must Be Kind Of Decent

Unbelievable, you say?

As in, beyond the realm of any human understanding? Or ... what?

What this must mean in microwavable popcorn terms is uncertain, but it must mean something (everything means something, even if it's that it doesn't mean anything).

Even less clear is where this package "Trail's End" popcorn came from. The only reason it comes to the fore is because of a random stumbling upon a picture of the "Best By: SEP 05 05 ... Unbelievable" label on the back side of the package.

Somehow, "unbelievable" demands notation, if only because assuring that something cannot be believed in could very well shake the foundation of faith as we know it.

Perhaps it means we shouldn't believe in this company that collects 30 percent of the revenue on every bag of popcorn that a Boy Scout sells and that blatantly pushes its product in a scrutiny-proof-girl-scout-cookie kind of way.

But that's beside the point. Check the website on the package if you want to deconstruct the absolute weirdness of Trail's End popcorn and the guy with the unbelievable mustache.

What makes this popcorn so unbelievable?

Is it that, when you taste it, the taste buds perceive a sensation so exquisite that they refuse to send a nerve impulse to the brain? That they're so certain this popcorn is so delicious that it requires no interpretation?

That would mean that if it tastes bad, we wouldn't know, because its sheer unbelievableness rules out any ability to categorize its superior pedigree.

Does it mean that the taste is unbelievable now, today, at this exact hour and minute? Or, perhaps, that if you open it on SEP 05 05, that is when it becomes most unbelievable ... and that any point before or after that fateful date makes it increasingly more believable?

To make the human mind fail to believe in the impossible is quite a feat.

This popcorn must be, at the least, better than average. And, in the best case scenario, capable of limiting human imagination.

Time to let the scorcery of microwaves bring this exotic culinary creation to fruition.

First, to be completely thorough, a review of the directions:

1.) Remove overwrap and place bag, unfolded, in the center of the microwave oven. BE SURE THIS SIDE IS UP!

Wait. What side? To read the directions, you have to unfold the bag. So ... OK, fold it back because it's supposed to be unfolded.

Sorry. Nevermind.

Check.

2.) POP! Set microwave on HIGH and set oven timer for 4 minutes (the actual cooking time will be between 1-1/4 and 4 minutes). Push START. Listen carefully! When popping slows to 2-3 seconds between pops, turn oven off. DO NOT LEAVE MICROWAVE OVEN UNATTENDED ... overcooking may result in scorching.

Will do. No diverging from specific instructions to make this popcorn more believable than it should be.

3.) OPEN BAG. Remove bag from microwave. Contents are Hot! Handle by corners only. Open bag away from face by pulling corners apart. Children should use microwave only with adult supervision. DO NOT reheat uppopped kernels or re-use bag.

Why? Oh, right. The heat bearing its transcendant essence is too much for the everyday human face to bear, and if a kernel hasn't popped, it wasn't meant to pop.

What's next?

4.) ENJOY! You've prepared high quality popcorn, always fresh, made to the highest standards.

You're damn right, brother! There's no higher standard than "unbelievable!"

Everything is in order. Now comes ... The Popping.

2:45. Sure enough, right on the money, the first kernel pops. "Unbelievable" is looking like quite the probability.

1:28. Popping is in full force now. Lips tremble at the sound.

8, 7, 6, 5 ... The popping has stopped. The moment with fate has arrived. Finally, the definition of that which can't be believed will be realized.

Here goes ...

Farewell, Tigers

"Good Season Tigers!" the cake from Sam's Wholesale read just 30 minutes before.

Just 30 minutes before, when, at the pizza after-party, Coach Tiger called each player to the front to present each a season-ending trophy and a congratulatory high-five as parents and fellow teammates erupted in praise.

The game was done. A 1-1 tie against the Wildcats, who were a tough team to shake the first game in a 1-0 victory.

Just 30 minutes before, tiny Tigers crowded around a single table, eating as one, for the last time, talking of goals scored and butterflies caught and the trophies soon to be had.

Just 30 minutes before, feeling the tide of inevitability, Coach Tiger called his charges into one last, tight circle.

"One, two, three ... Tigers!" Hands flung upward and a high-pitched symphony of togetherness echoed off the walls of the restaurant and back around again.

And with that, they approached with a sheepish "Thank you" and an occasional embrace. Then, somehow, they seemed to melt away into the ether, dispersed, leaving behind a small portion of their lives as sums of a whole.

All that's left, 30 minutes later, are the empty styrofoam cups, the cartoon that no one is watching anymore, the quarters no longer being turned in the prize machine, the pizza slices stripped of their cheese, the words of a cake now consumed and fueling early-evening sugar rushes.

The abolute desolation of it all. The finality.

It will be only a few short months before the Tigers don a new totemic color, with a new name, with a new coach, with an unfamiliar cast of teammates chanting "One, two, three ..."

Will they remember?

Coach Tiger will. And after all of his motivational inventions, he failed to deliver the most important message to his charges.

"No, thank you."

The Game Plan

Asa, Zach, Andrew and that tall freak of a kid, #2, at the four Forward positions because they've got the skillz to pay the billz.

Sarah Beth (#5? Yeah, #5. The other girl is Sophie) at Midfielder, because even though she's the tiniest, she's not afraid to mix it up. The heart of lion, she's got.

One of the space cadets at Sweeper, because we've got to put them somewhere and Kelvin is a capable Goalie who can pick up the slack for the second-to-last line of defense as the Sweeper picks the dandelions.

Andrew moves back to Sweeper when we've got a lead, then to Goalie in the final minutes.

He's the most aggressive, and he's our best chance to preserve a lead. He plays the entire game because he's a hustler and his mother is the super-organized Team Mom who's got our snacks and game times in order and reserves a dining room at the pizza joint a month ahead to make sure we have a bomb-ass season-ending party.

Please, someone -- anyone -- say it's OK that your 5-year-old says, "Daddy, did you see me score that goal? I told them, 'That ball's lunch, and I'm hungry!'"

Please, someone -- anyone -- affirm that he's not irreparably damaged.

His father has just become the coach of a YMCA pre-school soccer team for the remainder of the season -- beginning in the morning -- because Coach Curlee has been deployed to a base in Texas.

And, yes, Daddy wants to win.

The YMCA Tigers are undefeated.

3-0.

No team has yet to score on the Tigers' stifling D, and relentless offensive pressure has pushed the victory margin onward and upward ... 1-0, 3-0, 4-0.







Two games left.

The last missive of Coach Curlee (who is a semi-pro soccer player) before shipping out: "I think we can sweep this thing."

This bail bondsman and Army reservist understands. A man of vision. Rare in pre-school sports these days.

By his own admission, a tear came to his eye when his son, for the first time in three seasons, scored his first goal. Coach Curlee understands in a way that few do.

He lays out the strategy as he hands over the baton.

Let them play loose. No drills through cones.

He demands #11 stays in, because the coach's son is a sparkplug whose motor never stops. Don't take him out just because you're worried the parents will get jealous and think you leave him in just because he's your boy.

Sarah Beth is a sweet little beast. Kelvin is fearless. Andrew is versatile.

OK, Coach. Got it.

But, then, comes the catch.

The kids have to have fun.

OK. Yeah. Have to put that in the game plan.

These kids are so emotionally scarred for life.

____________

The Best Laid Plans ...


The Pirates pillaged. The Pirates plundered. The Pirates beat the Tigers 5-1.

The coach must take all responsibility ... but he must also point out that only seven Tigers showed up for this Saturday rain-out make-up.

The Tigers were outmanned, eight players to seven. The Tigers -- all seven of them -- played the entire game as the Pirates rotated in among 13 players. Counting the spaciest of the space cadets deciding to really space out today -- manning the field no more than 1/3 of the game -- the match-up was in reality 8 on 6.

The coach is accountable for allowing this discrepancy. Coach Pirate told Coach Tiger before the game that, for whatever reason, he was given an unusual number of players this spring and that he had been playing eight so the little guys didn't have to sit out too much.

Coach Tiger said kids playing was more important (damnit!). And somewhere deep down, Coach Tiger wanted to see what his little boys (and girl) were made of.

And that something is something special.

The Tigers fought valiantly, scratching and clawing against a seemingly never-ending swarm of bucanneers. Coach Tiger's son scored on a throw-in that was never kicked, but the Pirates ruled the day.

The Tigers were tired. The Tigers wanted their Mommies. Their Mommies told them to get back in the game because there was no one else to take their place.

The Tigers wanted Coach Tiger to hug them. He did.

Toward the end of the game, Coach Tiger rallied his dejected comrades into a circle. He tightened the circle. Looking into their eyes at the sheer "when-will-it-endness?" of it all, Coach Tiger rallied the troops for one more push.




"OK, guys. You've fought hard. We're outnumbered. I'm proud of you and you should be proud of yourselves. Who here wants to score a goal?"

Hands go up.

"I do."

"I do, too."

Coach Tiger is filled with pride. He holds up the soccer ball.

"OK, then, guys. You see this ball? This ball is lunch, and you guys ... you guys are hungry! So, are you hungry? Are you ready to eat?!"

The circle rumbles with a collective cachophony of growling preschoolers.

They were hungry.

For any eye that saw, the waning minutes were a flurry of feral feline passion.

The Tigers didn't score that goal.

But they were hungry.

And they ate.

Like champions.

Sinister

The gong smash in "Cornucopia" is sinister.

So, too, are the Dixie Youth Pirates, dressed in full black attire as they take the field. Preschoolers unwittingly intimidating other preschoolers by sheer visual presence.

The baseball uniforms. The piercing smash of the gong. Both assaulting the psyche with an instinctual, preeminent, blacked-out aura of aggressive abandon.

Little is so ominous, so assertively defiant, so ... sinister ... as Black Sabbath. As the sinister poet Henry Rollins would say, something as destructive as El Nino shouldn't be called El Nino. It should be called the first four Black Sabbath albums.

Black Sabbath, even today, is feared by those mindless masses who cry blasphemy at the mere thought of comparing 5-year-old children to "devil music."

But look beyond the moody dropped tuning, the screeching voice reverb, the forboding refrains.

The essence of it is clear.

We all must embrace what is sinister inside us.

Sinister is not evil. It's not hopeless. It is braving darkness and marching blindly onward in a frightening pursuit of the unknown.

Black Sabbath spoke bluntly and artfully on subjects that require such a journey of uncomfortable depth: the cold politics of war, emotional isolation, religious hypocrisy, the vices of greed and materialism.

Despite their contrived and overwrought allusions to the occult -- done for effect, the band readily admits, to create a noticeable identity -- they believed in the idea of something beyond the mortal coil.

Along the way as they obssessed over what else might be, they sermonized to a generation (and themselves) the dangers of excess, self-absorption and apathy.

Believing in something -- anything -- is far moless unsettling than the impressionable mind believing in a belief in nothing.

Black Sabbath faced, with chest bowed, whatever darkness inside us we must trudge awkardly through to be complete.

Idealistic.

Hopeful.

Intimidating.

Sinister.




_____

"Is your mind so small/
that you have to fall/
In with the pack/
wherever they run?

Will you still sneer/
when death is near/
And say that you might as well/
worship the sun?"

- "After Forever"

_____


"Too much in the truth/
they say/
Keep it till/
another day

Let them have/
their little game/
Illusion helps/
to keep them sane"

- "Cornucopia"

_____

"Now from darkness/
there springs light/
Wall of sleep/
is cold and bright/

Wall of sleep/
is lying broken/
Sun shines in/
you are awoken"

- "Behind The Wall Of Sleep"

_____

Man Size Wad

When you make the perfect slide ...

When you keep the team alive ...

When you block a shot or two ...

How do you know you're in the Big Leagues?

There is only one way ...




... when you're into Big League Chew.

We walked, a dollar in our pocket in the humid summer sunshine, to the air conditioned confines of the grimy conveinence store to buy the first issue of Alpha Flight and a pouch of Big League Chew sporting the bold and brash "Man Size Wads" plastered across in large type.

The guy in the commercial with the raspy, authorative voice extolling the virtues of the "Man Size Wads" growled in our psyches, echoing the propanganda designed to manipulate the tastes of children who wanted to be men before their time.

Children who wanted to be strong when they were weak.

Children who wanted to emulate with shredded bubble gum the virile sports symbolism of chewing tobaccy.

It was the yesteryears of the early 1980s: when offensive lineman never weighed more than 300 pounds; when basketball players wore Daisy Dukes and rims refused to collapse; when baseball players chewed tobacco as their shaggy mops flowed from their crusty mesh hats before shaggy mops and crusty mesh hats became a new retro; when the term "Man Size Wads" evoked images of larger-than-life ballplayers like LeBron James instead of larger-than-life creeps like Michael Jackson.

Their masculinity was confirmed -- the jingle suggested -- between the cheek and gum, chewing with passion and competitive spirit.

Winners.

Big League Chew bridged a gap of inappropriateness between sports gods and the young disciples who worshipped them.

A gob of gook puffing out the cheek was OK -- as long as it was shredded bubblegum, in keeping with true, conservative, Reaganesque '80s moral values.

Now it's not OK.

The philistines of today have relegated Big League Chew to the same fate as the candy cigarette.

Candy now demogogued as a gateway drug.

Grown, we long for the "Man Size Wads," knowing that so many of us never really ended up chewing ... or dipping ... or smoking ... even if we briefly ventured into the teen realm of addictive coolness.

For those of us who stayed, it wasn't the gum that did it.

Thank you, Indian/English-language-challenged/mall-confectionary-store proprietor, for keeping even the most miniscule stock of "'Outta Here Original," "Curveball Cotton Candy," "Slammin' Strawberry," "Swingin' Sour Apple" and "Wild Pitch Watermelon."

Thank you, Napoleon Dynamite, for stuffing that shredded cocktail of sugar and gum base in your mouth in the bathroom and swallowing it whole when you realized Trisha had ditched you.

You are the faithful torch-bearers of the persecuted pouch.

May The Chew be with you.

So, What's Your Sign?

The pear tree lilts with the wind.

Its clothes are on now, a suggestive robe of white petals.

Revealing, appealing; wooing so that it's life might perpetuate.

"So, yeah, anyway, what's your sign?"

Androgynous, it is both hiking its skirt and flexing its pectorals.

A saturating stench of springtime is invading the nose, clogging the pathways to living and breathing to sow life in futile ground.

It muddies the cool clearness of air that has no ambition.

Lilting with the wind, posing with bravado, imposing its erotic will.

"The money's on the table, baby. Buy yourself some Sudafed."

31 Minutes

The presents on the table are torture.

"When can I open them?"

"On your birthday."

"When's my birthday going to be here?"

"When you go to sleep."

Approaching midnight, the cartoon has sung him a lullaby, diffusing the anxiety of anticipation and calming him into sleep.

In 31 minutes, 5 conquers 4. In 31 minutes, a father's heart sinks, and he wants nothing more than to kiss the cheek of a sleeping boy who will suddenly grow into a man.

It is a nightly ritual, a desperate -- and ultimately futile -- act to freeze an age of innocence.

Less than a second it lasts, a mere moment that time erodes.

The minutes grind, relentlessly -- 1:12 ... 1:13 ... 1:14.

The moments within seconds chip away like a determined river with an endless source: A boulder becomes a stone; a stone becomes a pebble; a pebble blends into the great, complicated tapestry.

Time both gives and takes: Minutes become months; months become years; years become a lifetime.

Spider-Man pajamas become business suits.

Knowledge is gained and innocence is lost.

Slow down. You'll realize your Daddy is not a hero.

Stop growing, son, because he always wants to be one in your eyes.