It was exactly like they said it would be. We had three kids and it was this runaway train for years and then all of a sudden on September 9th youngest kid moves out and you look around and the house is empty. Just like that.

In a cosmic joke, I vowed when I was young to never have kids, but I’ve loved being a dad. Make no mistake, though, I lived through those 20+ years. Some of it was grinding–let no one tell you differently: Eight years of sleepless nights changes a person (and that person’s hair color). But when I look back, I mainly remember the good things. That’s a little ego integrity life reward: You hold on to the good things.

Now I’m 54 and everyone has moved on.

I was dragging the trash can out on Sunday night, a task that was the responsibility of others although I sometimes got stuck doing it. When I did, though, I could accompany my labor with a nasty text about why dad was doing someone else’s job: Hell to pay!

As I rattled the big green can through the dark that night, though, I realized I can’t “subcontract” this chore out now. And a thought hit me as I performed this most quotidian of jobs:

That’s the end of that.

For years, I’ve been arranging activities, clipping articles, logging movies and books geared around this home full of little people who grew big fast. Almost all parents start with a baby in a crib and a list of What are we gonna do next?

You’ll probably never get to it all. The homemade doll house. The tree fort. Getting that pool installed (which we may still do to spite them or lure them back home–you choose).

I don’t want this to seem all melancholy or sulky. My youngest was on three vacations without us this summer and all of them have been busy for years, so our house, once a perpetual hub of activity, gradually grew accustomed to quiet.

But the thought hits me everywhere.

We went over to watch some Palmyra high school soccer, and for the first time since 2013, there was no Warnock out there.

That’s the end of that.

I was on the phone wandering the house, and I went into Zachary’s room. He had cleared out most of his stuff, and I was jolted by the echo; it was as if I was in a room in a new house. I hustled out as if I were in danger of being bespelled.

[Screeching tires indicating an abrupt halt]

Then, while writing this as a way of doing a little empty nest processing, I got (finally, after 2.5 years) COVID. I was flattened for a week. Forget the nest, my brain felt empty; I was as sick as I’ve been in 20 years.

I’m slowly getting back my energy, and I’m among the living. People have asked me what it’s like “to be an empty nester,” and I say that the COVID thing broke my stride of experiencing what it was really like.

But I do look at the agenda of what’s before us.

I get up on weekends, and the house is calm. I want to ask whoever is home what their previous evening was like, but there’s no one to ask.

That’s the end of that.

I had vowed not to be the father of Harry Chapin or Everclear ballads, and I feel a sense of triumph that I overcame and wasn’t that. We didn’t build the tree house, my kids and me, but we did plenty. I was there the whole time. No regrets.

But daily, as Zachary thrives during his first year at school, something happens that reminds me:

That is the end of that.

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Let me start by saying that if my youngest puts as much study time into school as he put into researching a new computer–credit to the boy, he used Mom’s computer during high school without a complaint–he’s going to do well. I was amazed at the amount of effort he put into it.

Of course, all this investigation took place online. At one point, I said, “Hey, do you want to put your hands on something? Let’s take a ride to Best Buy.” He agreed, and off we went.

I admit that I was, uh, not dressed all that sharp. I was in a hurry. I had on longish, droopy khaki shorts with no belt, an oversized white t-shirt that was tucked in here and there, and my [new] black sneakers. As we walked in the store, he looked me up and down and said, “You are dressed like such a dad!”

We started looking at computers, and because my wife wasn’t involved, neither of us had the sense to check closing time, which was in 10 minutes. We did get a lot done in that 10 minutes, thanks to a helpful Best Buy dude. We checked out several laptops, and my son developed a clearer sense of what he wanted.

We were about to walk out, but, oh no, I wasn’t done. I waited until our dude came back around, cleaning things up for the night.

I gestured to him from an aisle away and said, “Hey, can I ask you one more question?

“Sure,” he said, walking over to us.

My son gave me a puzzled look, and I wagged my thumb hitchhiker-like toward one of the computers and asked, “Do, er, these things, er, help you connect to the Interweb?” Every part of the dude’s face started shrinking toward its center–he was bemused. Then my son and I burst out laughing, and the dude caught on, laughed and shook his head and walked away.

As we walked out of the store, and my son started punching me: “I can’t believe you asked him that!”

We chuckled all the way to our car, and when I hopped in, I said something like, “Insult my outfit, that’s what you get.”

I can’t wait to meet his new pals from college.

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I have a memory that when we were kids, my brother, several friends, and I buried a time capsule in our backyard in a large hole that we would dig some summers.

This hole that we would dig was a source of great fun. We would dig it and then spend most of our time in there with our Micronauts and Star Wars figures and toys like that (what we collectively called “men”).

It had other purposes too. A favorite game was “find the hole”: Someone would be blindfolded and wander around the yard while the rest of us called out “hot” and “cold.” The goal was to “find” the hole, which meant you would topple (painfully) into it. Once you did, it was the next person’s turn.

Some laughs!

Following my dad’s passing, my brother and I (rather quickly) sold the old house. Pete and I decided, after years of occasional discussion about the actual existence of the time capsule, that we had one last chance.

Pete lived eight houses from me, and we have been best friends since third grade. He was in on all of it: wiffleball, jarts (including the punctured gutter incident), side-yard football, and playing with those mini dudes.

On a hot Memorial Day with the closing of the old place looming, he and I met down in Berlin.

Locating the site of the former hole was easy. The indentation from our dig-the-hole days was surprisingly obvious, right next to a derelict shed that was covered with a blue tarp secured by binder clips. (The old man was nothing if not resourceful.)

We each brought a shovel. As he cruises into his golden years, Pete may not be svelte, but he can still wield a shovel. Down we went, digging away and wishing we hadn’t turned down the neighbor’s offer of Gatorades after we had given him a ladder.

We didn’t know exactly what we were after. I told a somewhat skeptical Pete that in my mind’s eye, we had buried in some kind of secure plastic container (such as a two-liter Coke bottle) notes and other mementos of that era. Pete had some doubt that we had done this at all, but my brother provided at least the causality by reminding us that Berlin, during our nation’s bi-centennial, had buried its own time capsule. Not only did that create the likely source of own capsule idea, but it put a timestamp on when we buried it, probably from 1976 to 1978!

We came across a rusted tire iron, but it was close to the surface, so we decided that was a relic of some other event.

We dug deeper and deeper, widening the hole as we went. We dug to the point where we figured our nine- or eleven-year-old selves would have reached their limits, and then a little beyond. Nothing. We started feeling despondent.

Then we saw something. Something metal glinting at the bottom of the hole. We were almost giddy. We reached into the dirt and pulled out…

…a spoon?

This was stupid and unsatisfying, but the spoon was too far down to be a random find. We were onto something. We became excited, and we traded time in the hole in rapid shifts, scooping up earth. Then we found… another spoon. Then another. In all, we found five mismatched spoons.

We also started finding shards of plastic. It seemed clear they were part of Leggs eggs pantyhose holders. Did we put stuff in them, ignorant to the fact that these flimsy containers would surely crack–perhaps even as soon as we buried them?!

We found a metal toy gun. Then a badly broken plastic toy gun. A Tropicana orange juice lid.

We kept at it, but that was it. In one final tease, I thought I saw the side of a condensation-filled two-liter bottle, but it was merely a glittering rock. We were becoming delusional.

Here is the total take:

Looking at it, we wondered if we had once again, as we all do sometimes, inflated the reality of youth with hopeful memories. Weren’t we these precocious kids, cleverly storing away wisdom for our future selves? In actuality, it appeared we couldn’t even muster the smarts to find suitable containers.

On the other hand, we were creative and innovative enough, had the wherewithal, to devise a time capsule, to envision future selves and think about communicating with those strangers. And we made it there: We made it to 40+ years later, still friends, giving us at least an opportunity to play as archaeologists seeking our mini-civilization of mid- to late-70s Berlin, NJ. Maybe we were child geniuses!

But, still, what was with all the damn spoons?!

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A few years ago, because she wanted me to cut something down and my gas chainsaw was decrepit, my wife bought me a battery-powered DeWalt chainsaw. For my limited purposes, its battery oomph works great.

Last year, I added a battery-powered DeWalt lawn mower. Suddenly, including the hand-me-down battery-powered weed whacker I got a few years ago, I’m close to green landscaping!

A general side effect of battery and electric power is you get metrics, even simple ones like the three little green power indicators on the lawnmower. There’s no doubt this information has made me a better fellow traveler on our planet.

Now, as I mow my grass (and I’m even working to rid myself of this grass and go for natural landscaping to be even more eco friendly), I’m determined to get it all done–front, sides, and back–before the batteries drain. Where I would once make these neat, (spouse-pleasing) angular rows, I now hustle. I make wide, curvy turns instead of hairpins. My mowing is eddy shaped.

I mow faster. I’m more in tune with the world.

(In moments of mid landscaping despair, I reflect on the gas I wasted during past gas-powered lawn cuttings.)

But all good things have a revenge effect, and now I have a new kind of strife–family strife. More than ever, I’m on my son to “cut that there grass right!”

This draconian lawn-cutting oversight I engage in is a perfect breeding ground for passive-aggressive male child behavior. He pushes the button and pulls the lever. From there, he lollygags. He saunters. He strolls.

I watch him pausing in a state of dreamy oblivion and making these sharp, time-consuming, double-back turns. I grow exasperated. I know what those little green lights are doing.

I bully. I fulminate. I yell.

I eventually use my latest go-to line of disdain, going for the jugular on my soon-to-be Drexel University student. I let him have it: “And you’re going to be a civil engineer?!” I sneer the last two words, knowing full well he can hear me because of the purr-like quiet of the battery mower.

To his credit, he is unfazed. He feels not flogged nor stunned by my verbal fusillade but in fact stumbles through it as he continues his wasteful landscaping.

And he gets his vengeance… the battery lights dim from 3, to 2, to 1.

He’s not even finished the backyard, and the mower is out of juice. Kaput. I howl in anger.

For Father’s Day, my wife got more batteries. (Surprise!)

So now when the batteries die, he calmly goes in, has a lemonade, and gets the replacement packs. He’s in the house for hours, maybe weeks.

While I seethe.

It is not lost on me that now even my rage is battery powered.

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When you bring home that first baby, I don’t care how many people you’ve talked to or books you’ve read, lurking in you is the core dread that you have no real idea how to keep this tiny entity you love so much alive.

I started writing in this space in 2010. My kid who was six at the time graduated high school last week. My daughter who was 11 at that time (and was engaged in activities like rhetorically dueling with me about cell phone upgrades) graduated from college the week before that.

In my line of work, I go to a lot of graduations (this year while wearing my own graduation costume I even read out the names of undergraduates in Drexel’s College of Arts & Sciences). But in 2022, I was contemplative as I watched my bookend kids (Nate is in the middle of his journey right now). I puzzled through a question: How much did I really do to make it all happen?

The girl, Elizabeth, had triumphed over some, ahem, indecisive years to cross the college stage with a degree in behavioral health counseling and a minor in psychology. She has plans and dreams and goals, and she is equipped with the talents and smarts to achieve them. Even though her road was bumpy, I always thought her day would come, but when I heard her name called, the moment held a peculiar emotion.

I guess I also never doubted that my youngest, Zachary, was going to finish high school. His graduation marks an end to one point of my wife’s and my collective journey. Graduation night (as we took pictures in front of the incredible PHSFEE mural!) people kept asking us, “What will you do now that you’ll soon be empty nesters?” Geez, we were only a half hour post graduation, I thought, and it’s gotta be less pressure than all that wondering about keeping them alive.

Zachary’s group is close knit, and I coached many of his classmates in soccer and wrestling. I knew them since they were all these little bodies with giant noggins. There are incredible stories, I thought, as I watched the red-gowned cohort on the green athletic field in front of us graduation night. Where some of those kids were five, six years ago–incredible how they have become who they are.

By the time kids get their name called on the big day, many of those watching are weary/wily parent veterans. I looked around at the parents at Elizabeth’s two ceremonies–first, the college graduation at The Mann Center and then at the big gig at Citizens Bank Park–and then at Zachary’s Palmyra High School Stadium event. There we all were, a bunch of people who at times no doubt wanted to leave things be because we didn’t want to mess it all up–and then sometimes, damn it!, we felt we had to get involved, well, just because. And we were never knew which way was right!

That tiny human stage ended fast, didn’t it? They grew, and they met these other humans, their friends, and after all the time you spent indoctrinating them with our values (c’mon, let’s face it) they immediately start doing things their friends do, including developing their unique discourse communities and saying a bunch of stuff you have no idea what it means. (I’m still not clear about “That’s cap.”)

But graduation night, here my kids were, despite all the fatherly missteps and blunders. Through a combination of great communities at Palmyra High for Zachary and Drexel for Elizabeth and good friend groups and incredible mentors and adults for both, they made it.

Elizabeth is going through the transition. Graduation, commencement, is laced with joy, but that betrays the reality for many, especially after college, that the years of structure and friends are disrupted–until new structures and new friends emerge.

Zachary’s cute “brownie bunch” posed for pictures with, of all things, cigars, and I was pleasantly bemused.

They are through and out of their particular stages.

Maybe there was even a little good parenting in there somewhere.

Congratulations, Zachary and Elizabeth.

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I’m not blaming the news. But I do wish news sources would do more to siphon at least some of the fuel out of mass shootings. The generic headline template each time: Innocent people killed by armed coward.

Put the victims first. But don’t feature body counts. Don’t give us comparison charts with previous cowards. Don’t say “most” or “worst.” We can get to the facts as we read or listen to the story, but provide as little as possible to encourage the next coward to raise the bar as a vent of rage or a twisted statement of hate.

Keep the story simple and straightforward. There are too many guns out there, too many movie trailers with people all tough-like pointing guns at the screen, to say it’s all the media’s fault.

But I think media outlets can do their part, can do better in their ledes as they introduce the next in our culture’s endless string of mass shooting stories. They can use language to drain these events perhaps of some of their power so some coward out there has to sniff real hard to get any potential whiff of misbegotten glory.

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I grew up playing football in a school that, back in the day, was probably like a lot of other schools: We were indoctrinated not to like soccer.

Our coaches used it as a foil, calling it, to put it nicely, a gentleman’s sport compared to our violent, blood-and-guts endeavor.

As with most forms of indoctrination, this flew in the face of the empirical evidence in front of our faces. My school had one of the best boys teams in the area, a team that included several tough dudes who also were my wrestling teammates.

I never saw a high school game. In fact, I never watched a soccer game at all until I became the team reporter for the Rutgers-Camden student newspaper, The Gleaner, my frosh year at college. (And oh what heights I would climb at The Gleaner, only a year later becoming the woefully unprepared editor-in-chief.)

I became friends with several players, especially my boys the DeFeo brothers, and I began to develop an appreciation for the sport.

But even as late as the early aughts, I was still basically a block-headed American when it came to soccer.

Then dad-dom struck. Soccer is a big socializing event in my community, so early on we enrolled our five-year-old daughter as a way to meet folks. The league always needs coaches, so I volunteered for my first group: The Purple Lions. (I also coached Blue Thunder before settling into red teams, mostly because then I would always have spare red jerseys: The Red Hot Chili Peppers, The [incredible] Red Hot Lava Rocks, The Flaming Cardinals, among others. Every team had a talisman/good luck charm; I am especially proud of the spray-painted concrete chunk “lava rock”.)

I grew interested in the nuances of the game, and I paid attention to what any coach near me was doing; I collected drills by writing them on index cards and then a booklet.

But I was yet an outsider who didn’t appreciate the broader sport, even expressing annoyance at what I considered the overhyped World Cup (!).

I still didn’t get it.

My kids, though, kept playing. All three of them enjoyed the sport and had decent success, but it was also a communal activity that connected them with friends and some high-quality adults. I thought my boys would play football some day, just like their old man!, but it never happened. They didn’t even watch Eagles games, a ritual that remains a rare afternoon couch-surfing activity for me.

So I had a choice. Even if I was supportive–you know, giving rides, attending games–would I really embrace this thing they loved, or would I remain an outsider? I suppose it’s a bigger question, regardless of the activity or interest: You have these kids who become–and just as everyone said, this has happened in a blur–full-blown people with their own interests, and will the day come when you realize you have nothing in common?

For me, I basically had to stop being an idiot.

Sure, NFL mania still courses through my systema nervosum, but I watched soccer with my kids and their friends and began to understand.

Of course, now that I’m just getting it, my run as a soccer coach is at an end. Who will inherit my pile of index cards and notebooks?

The other day, I settled on the couch to watch Liverpool vs. Manchester City. I’m rooting Man City all the way–it’s my older son’s favorite team. I know most of both rosters, and I have a favorite player on each team: Virgil van Dijk–hey, my boys were both center backs!–and the sublime Kevin De Bruyne.

My youngest was visiting his siblings in Philly to get a taste of college life (that young’un returned home with pink hair is a tale for another time…). I was by myself, enjoying the two-hour sojourn just like an NFL game.

The kids arrived a few hours later for Sunday dinner, filling up the house with presence.

You know, I think we all have lots in common and always have lots to cover, but when the boys saw me, they both gave me a knowing nod: “How about that game?” And I knew exactly what they were talking about.

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It wasn’t complicated. He had fallen at dialysis a few weeks ago, an event that occurred only a week after his surprisingly speedy recovery from having a pacemaker implanted.

He fell at dialysis at least in part because he refused assistance when he needed, mid treatment, to use the rest room. He went in, and then down he went.

Following that fall, tired of dialysis, of the, to him, shackling dependency that accompanied it, he said, while in a hospital bed at Cooper, “No more.” Maybe there were other factors. COPD. The elusive pains of aging. The ever-shrinking world that accompanies getting old, especially in our culture.

It was his decision and that was it. I only made one pitch for future possibility, describing a few things I thought he might consider living for, but he had done the mental calculus about those things and was moving forward. When I brought up my kids, his grandchildren, he said, “That’s your thing. Let’s talk about my thing.”

My brother and I respected the decision.

Years ago, I read an article in The Atlantic about the burgeoning issue of elder care in our culture. The article described it as a largely hidden problem—until we talked about it, maybe even with some stranger on a train, and then we realize how many of us share these challenges.

Decisions. Once you say no more, there still needs to be a place. You don’t just welcome death and lie in the grass and he comes to get you.

There is a lot of waiting. Where would it take place?

He posed the option of going to his house—to what?: To being bed-ridden and alone?

We mulled it over and then decided he would experience hospice at our home.

My wife was a damn hero about it all. She created a bright, sunny care space in our front room. She hung a painting of the first night game at old Ebbet’s Field and a display of his Marine service medals, featuring two Purple Hearts from Korea. Family photos everywhere. A room that colorfully said “home.” He could be hard-hearted, but he said he marveled at the love around him. He said it in a way that affirmed for me how little of that he had had in his life.

She took the job seriously, compassionately. I would find her, day after day, sitting in the front room with him, working on a puzzle.

The kids were great. They handled this process as best they could.

Samaritan Hospice—what would these people be doing if they hadn’t found the call for this kind of work? Their efforts were extraordinary.

He went through an initial period of calm, but then he became frustrated and angry. “It’s all shit!” “Nothing’s worth a shit!” Again, you can’t just lie down and will death. The body is tough, even when denied food and even finally drink.

Other moments. Two nights in, we found him on the floor without a stitch on. There was equipment around the railed hospital bed. There was no way we could figure he could have made it to the floor without falling, but there was no thump. Slid down, amongst the equipment? There he was, while the three of us tried to shake out the cobwebs and figure out what to do. You don’t call 9-1-1 in a hospice scenario. Finally, we had this exchange:

Me: How did you get up?

Him: Up?!

Me: Yeah, we found you lying here on the floor.

Him: Well that’s not really up, is it?

He and my wife got to, uh, know each other. Without dialysis, the body becomes intolerably itchy, and she regularly saw to that. One day, he said, “Scratch my heinie. About this time we’re pretty good acquaintances.”

At one point, my wife and brother thought it was surely over. I arrived home from work, and they rushed me into the house for the final good-bye. I sat for a minute, but then, unconvinced, I walked away to get a sandwich. He was lying there, unresponsive, and then popped up and looked at them brightly: “Hi guys!”

Anything complex grammatically and semantically became difficult then impossible. His vocabulary funneled down to simple commands: “Up!” “Juice!” “Drink!” and of course “Death!” This life-long accountant, trying to explain, in head-gripping frustration, about how he wants to count the “home runs” in the “fiscal quarter.”

Discussing the dying process is always a curious thing, especially in our still virtual era. It’s weird. You’re going through this at home, downstairs, and then you go upstairs and log in to a virtual meeting. It seems especially inappropriate to drop it on people in a Zoom meeting or on email.

There are renewed connections, though. I talked to an aunt and cousins in California I haven’t spoken to in decades.

But my dad was a hermit. Misanthrope. We didn’t have a ceremony, because he was outside the warm sphere of humanity, seemingly by choice. I had to laugh when I came across this a few weeks afterward:

“I got nothin’ against mankind. It’s people I can’t stand.” pic.twitter.com/cThtEx7emk

— Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) March 18, 2022

My work handled it all great, humanely. So did my wife’s. So did my brother’s. As people around us found out, they did what they could, and it was always enough: A little food. Some conversation. Contact.

My brother found podcasts of old games, including the greatest NFL game ever played, the Colts-Giants 1958 NFL Championship that my Dad not only attended but still has the ticket stub. My wife created a play list. I couldn’t help but pause when I heard Frank Sinatra’s “My Way,” as he was fading, fading…

Then the rattles. No real pain, but total disconnect.

That last night, two-and-a-half weeks after he arrived, I cautioned my son when he was out later than our bedtime not to go in and check on Grandpop, as I didn’t want him to make the unfortunate discovery. My son came home at 12:30 and did peek in: Life was soldiering on.

I got up 6 a.m. the following morning and he was gone.

Tags: ends & odd, health & medical, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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Note: To people who don’t care about football, this one has little for you. Also, those of you who grew up around Dallas and/or in the 70s or 90s, you get a free pass here: I still hate your team, but not you. Any reader may be puzzled if not stunned by my visceral anger about this topic.

I won’t say I’m a reasonable man. I don’t like to leave myself that wide open to my “friends.”

So I’ll just say that I’m particularly unreasonable about that loathsome football group from Dallas. We have a duty to make sure kids don’t become Cowboys fans. The things that are wrong with football, sports, and our country are embodied by this pompous, underachieving team.

First, they have a nickname–and nobody outside Dallas should ever mention it–that consists of using a shortened form of the United States of America and making it appear through insidious use of possessive case that the entire country feels deep connection to this organization, a bit of linguistic- and grammar-fueled subterfuge.

This shameless marketing ploy was developed in the late 70s by, of course, a broadcaster. As a result, because the perception of the team’s popularity increased their games were televised more, a vicious cycle, a vortex of fame.

Putrid. If you don’t see how the long shadow of such celebrity behavior soils our whole culture, you’re not looking.

The organization also stands as an exemplar of entitlement, that you deserve something just because. Certainly, pro sports has plenty of entitlement, but the Cowboys and their despicable, ghastly, prunish owner take such hubris to another level.

The NFL has bent over backward for this club. Pay attention! After the Cowboys lost ungracefully in the playoffs this year (more about this in a moment), a screen chyron noted that it had been blank blah-blah # of years since this loser franchise had been to an NFC Championship game, as if it’s their birthright, as if it’s shocking news.

(Note that both analysts on the champion game broadcasts were former Cowboy quarterbacks. The league will not break the addiction! [Although, truth be told, dammit, I don’t mind Aikman, even though he was overrated as a quarterback: see below].)

Get this: In the past quarter century, of the 32 NFL teams, only six scrub organizations haven’t made it to the conference championship game. The Cowboys are in this group: The bottom 20%. In this century, they have the 12th best record. This is an average-to-bad franchise with a long-standing record of failure that surrounds it like a miasma.

The Cowboys also exemplify how those who do the real work get overlooked. Dallas was solid in the 90s, but those teams were good primarily because they had the best offensive line in history, a squad regularly at the top of lists like this and this.

If you’re a football fan, you know what I’m talking about. This line allowed the skill players, the guys who get all the ads and attention, to lead overly inflated career. Running back Emmitt Smith is the worst example. He was a solid little running back who would have had a decent NFL career, but behind this line, he ended up in the Hall of Fame.

Watch his “highlights” compared to those of any of the truly great running backs. Mostly he’s running untouched down the field with maybe a porky little stiff arm at the one-yard line or he’s jogging untouched through a massive hole for yet another two-yard score. I have a less-than-svelte friend who could’ve scored 20 touchdowns a season behind Smith’s O-line–and I don’t mean in my buddy’s “prime” 30 years ago. I mean now. Smith is completely overrated and despite his gaudy stats isn’t even a top 25 all-time NFL back.

There’s also this illusion about Dallas gentility. People love to blab about Philadelphia Eagles fans throwing snowballs at Santa, but that is an overhyped and misrepresented story. One, it happened 54 years ago, and, two, it actually shows Eagles fans are hard to fool!: That day, they were disgusted by a shabby Santa at the end of a shabby season and they let their club know it!

Okay, Philly did have a jail in the bowels of old Veterans Stadium. That one is harder to explain away, but at least Philly fans have the sense/class to beat up the other team, as opposed to the in-bred fight club among Dallas fans after their typical nosedive in the playoffs this year, when the fans actually beat each other up after another early elimination. This left their QB apologizing.

The Cowboys have long been an example of what’s wrong with everything. If you know a young person rooting for Dallas, fix it. They deserve better.

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(For those two or three fans I have out there, apologies for the hiatus. I took a little time off from writing as I transitioned into a new job at Drexel.)

I’d say college rankings, specifically U.S. News and World Report rankings, are back, except they’ve never gone away. These cussed things persist in the face of all reason, supported, no, in fact, developed, by what are ostensibly (and, in many cases, otherwise) smart people.

As the Chronicle of Higher Education reported recently, colleges still “obsess” over the rankings, and this obsession manifests itself concretely through the strategic plans of these institutions. Translation: Universities plan and do very specific things mainly (if not solely) to satisfy the rankings. Check for yourself.

U.S. News, on its site, which I will not share here as a small, pathetic gesture of my resistance, frustratingly says this: “Schools are ranked according to their performance across a set of widely accepted indicators of excellence.” “Are ranked”–a delightful use of passive voice. “Widely accepted”–by who?

As an example of the problems with the concept of “widely accepted,” consider that even though colleges and universities are increasingly recognizing the problems with standardized test scores, there’s old, conservative U.S. News still using such scores as a 5% chunk of its ranking algorithm. To be fair, it seems to be budging toward a more informed use of such scores, but it’s not there yet.

It is going to take a more powerful public rejection than we have yet experienced to get these rankings out of our lives. I was once on a committee to review a colleague, and I was explicitly told to find reviewers from “better” institutions. It was clear that the “better” institutions from which I was to seek reviewers were to be chosen by a journey through U.S. News rankings.

Not only are the rankings biased, but because they seem so official, they allow us to make a cognitive leap and fix our perception of schools. I always feel terrible when I hear a value judgment of a whole school slip from someone’s lips. “A good school?” “A bad school?” What about all the people there teaching and studenting, all the people whose lives are invested in these places?

When I talk to high school students, I just keep telling them to find a place that works for them and then go for it. At almost any institution, they will find solid faculty, interesting friends, and an alumni network to help at the next level. Rather than helping students find a place that’s a good fit, the rankings may just better reflect the kinds of schools people like to advertise on vanity sweatshirts.

Save the trouble. You can buy the sweatshirt and ignore the absurdity of these judgments, as Gawker’s Brandy Jensen suggests in her short, wicked piece “Kindly Stop Telling Me Which College You Attended.”

School ratings obviously persist because people use them and refer to them. I wish I could close by saying that if we would just collectively stop picking colleges based on ratings, they would disappear in a hurry, but that’s naive, and things are likely getting worse: U.S. News recently released “its first-ever rankings of public elementary and middle schools in the United States, according to The Hechinger Report.

It’s not bad enough that people pick pre-k “good” schools so their kids don’t have to be around other, ahem, those other kids, but now they’re going to get a magazine to put a stamp on it.

We have a lot of work to do.

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I’ve been a bad dad, I realized the other day. I had never shown my boys the grand days of world-wide phony-baloney wrestling.

This isn’t that glitzy crap that’s on today. It was the WWF, the World Wrestling Federation. The glory days of absurdly impossible maneuvers and shocking stereotype characters.

I haven’t seen one of these “matches” in decades, but phony-baloney wresting came up the other day, and my older son and I watched a few WWF “bouts.”

Aside from everything else, it’s moments like this when I realize what a great person he is to hang out with. We were cracking up. Snorting in amazement. He would shake his head and sputter, “This is ridiculous!” as Ivan Putzski delivered his Polish Hammer or Mr. Fuji (my god, the stereotypes) accidentally tossed salt into his partner’s eyes. How a dirty trick backfired! We roared while the announcers calmly described the improbability of one of the Wild Samoans (!) futilely trying to keep super-strong Tony Atlas in a full nelson–not happening!

Watching these zoomed me back into the past. We would tune in on our little TVs and absorb the spectacle. It couldn’t be real… but, I mean, look how seriously all these adults were taking it. The referee counting, counting… we didn’t know what he was counting, but he was always counting something. Those announcers narrating it all if it were a real athletic event, talking about the combatants’ strategies and how they had dealt with similarly difficult situations in past “bouts.” The juiced-up crowd exhorting Tito Santana, dazed on the concrete apron, to rise again or throwing debris at the Lumberjacks when Chief Jay Strongbow’s (!) tag team partner betrayed him.

Think about it: So many adults were in on the joke–almost like Santa Claus. I told my son we would sit in our dim carpeted rec rooms as tweens and there was this sliver of time when we debated whether it was all real. He laughed, and I did too, because these videos are so absurd, but it seemed real for a simple reason: Because everyone surrounding it was taking it so seriously!

The ref. The suit-wearing announcers. The crowd.

We had no Internet, and we leaped off our battered couches doing atomic elbow drops ourselves, thinking, maybe, just maybe…

But then we wised up. I think we were 13.

We realized that just because a bunch of nuts yell and scream and a few well-dressed people talk with a straight face that that didn’t make it all true. Damn, Jimmy Superfly Snuka was just a really athletic actor. Damn, there was no Santa.

We learned this stuff well before we learned to drive. It wasn’t that hard to recognize that it was easy to create a broad facade of falsehood, and as kids you could enjoy it, no harm done–but adults believing in the charade of Rowdy Roddy Piper?… well, they were friggin’ crazy!

We knew before we could drive how simple it was for people to play it straight in a big lie. Calling bs?: That’s solid knowledge that you would think would carry us all the way through life.

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Most likely, you know about Simon Biles and the 2021 Olympics. I haven’t followed too closely the web scuttlebutt following her decision to withdraw from much of Olympic competition, only partially because I’m shutting myself off from Olympic news so as not to get spoilers every night.

I know that she specifically had the “twisties,” and, more importantly, has been inspirational in discussing mental health. Her health, of course, is interlocked with her positioning as one of the greatest athletes ever, but I wonder if, while she is an extraordinary person, that she has something in common with many others: She’s one of the yes-more people.

It’s tough being a yes-more person. You always say yes. You always do more.

The lives of yes-more people are often engulfed by expectations, accomplishments, roles, titles, and duties. For long stretches of time, they often do get it all done. They brim with pride when someone says, “How do you do it?”

But other times, they’re hollowed out, sleep-deprived, disoriented.

I can be a yes-more person. I don’t know when it all started, but I got in the mode of doing things, saying yes–both in local activities and at work–and increasingly piling on. I got involved, got organized, and wanted to meet the world. I kinda love it most of the time.

But once in a while, it has left me hollowed out, sleep-deprived, disoriented.

It is difficult to escape, because yes-more people get a strong sense of identity from these external measures of self. And this can be very difficult to notice.

I had an experience with a very wise counselor once. I had a holiday gift for her, a candle (of course purchased by my wife because I was too busy to get it myself). As I exited my car to deliver the gift, I was not only in a rush (because I was late!), but I also had in my hands too much stuff including a phone, wallet, keys (I mean, why use a pocket?), a book. I tried to then answer a phone call and grab the gift, which was wrapped and in a paper bag, at the same time.

Of course, I dropped the bag on the pavement. I heard the jar around the candle shatter. Damn! I thought, but I brought it to her anyway, so she could see I did have something. I showed her and promised I would take it back and return with a replacement soon.

Oh no, she said, relieving me of the bag, I want this one. I was puzzled. But she made clear the experience for me by saying, When you do too many things, something breaks. She kept that candle so she could remind me of that simple fact when I needed such reminding.

You can see that story resonated for me. I don’t always succeed in following the advice of the wise counselor. I still often become identified with my yes-more self.

Sometimes, world-class athlete or not, you have to say no. Go to one less meeting. Miss a workout. Admit you can’t do it.

Make no mistake, there are costs to saying no, missing things. But as I watched Biles’ smart interview with Mike Tirico at the end of her Olympic experience, I saw realizing your limits, even for the extraordinary, can help you avoid the more serious and sometimes dangerous costs of the yes-more person.

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I saw a story the other day about teenage stock traders.

Teenagers trading stocks? What could possibly go wrong?

I think back to myself as an entrepreneurial teen. What would I have done with my hard-earned cash from my Courier-Post newspaper route or my sporadic lawn-cutting jobs? What kinds of companies would have caught my glittering investor eye?

I would have put a lot of money into eight-tracks, then vinyl, then cassettes, then probably Betamax… yeah, you heard it right: Betamax. I remember someone who I thought was smart telling me it was the next great thing. You get the gist, right?: I wouldn’t exactly have been on the cutting edge of the next big thing in music media.

Electric football. Atari. Jarts.

Ultimate disc leagues. The USFL (!).

I still don’t know a damn thing about fashion, but would that have stopped me? Two-tone jeans. Big banana-shaped back pocket combs.

I might have gone sci-fi. A company promising to reincarnate John Bonham and Jim Morrison? Sold. Inviso dust. Take my money, please.

The problem, man, was I had no vision as a teenager. It was all right in front of me, ready for the taking, it seemed, but in reality it was evanescent whimsy.

Now, admittedly, we didn’t have the Internet back in olden times, so our knowledge sphere was smaller. I couldn’t look at charts and graphs to guide me to the next big thing.

I’d have been forced to stay local. I’d support the nearby 7-11. The clam bar at the Berlin Auction. I would have backed K-Mart, the big store down the street (only the clam bar has survived).

A frenzy of bad decision making.

By the way, teenage stock trading strikes me as coupled, at least conceptually, with the deluge of online betting sites. If you watch sports on TV, you know they’re everywhere. I certainly don’t have the technical knowledge or vocabulary, but both types of endeavors are tapping into a similar kind of rush. Some of us can hit that vein only once in a while. Unfortunately, many can’t.

I was talking to a relative young ‘un in the gym the other day. He works for an online betting company and was reflecting on the similarities between online betting and stocks, noting the significant difference that unlike stocks, in online betting when the game is over, you could be instantly at zero.

I won’t go into how my youthful online betting would have gone, as enough people now live that pain daily, but let’s just say I would have kept ponying up that the Minnesota Vikings were going to win a Super Bowl.

My college sources tell me kids bet on anything because they can do it right on their phones. Don’t get me wrong, I love to play some cards. I’ve enjoyed times in the casino. But betting on the coin flip of the Super Bowl?–never my kind of thing.

To me, it’s hard to imagine that this mindset, especially since it’s manifested with the languid tap of a phone, is good for kids. Tomorrow is far away for them, and a $100 bet on a team to cover the over-under can seem true and inevitable, much like a $500 bet on the next great company. Life is about risk, sure, but there’s a difference between risk and gambling, and for the most part, teenagers imbibe enough risk- cocktail without mixing in the power juice of straight-up gambling.

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Every time I get into one of my cars, the same thing happens–one of life’s petty little annoyances. It’s quiet, and I want to turn on the radio. Decades of instinct and logic have trained me that in such situations I should click on the power.

But instead, when I do that now, I turn the system off. Frustrating!

The reason this happens is because the power actually was on, but the input selection was turned to AUX or USB. When a Warnock child drives one of the cars (we’re good Americans and now have a bunch of vehicles), they always immediately plug in their phones and listen to their playlists.

Like many other aspects of modern life, they have embraced selection over serendipity: They pick exactly what they listen to.

If I say this makes me sad, you’ll pick on me in a generational way. But I’ll say it anyway: It makes me sad.

I recently needed to have a conversation with a wise person, my colleague Prof. Robert Watts. I sent him an email, and then he called me. I missed the call and called him back. When he answered, we laughed about this: There we were, old-timers exchanging phone calls.

He said he tells his students about the days when your phone would ring, your cord-tethered land line, and you had no idea who was calling. If you picked up–and we often did–there was sometimes a surprise person on the other end.

Now, you only pick up (or not) when you recognize the call.

You only listen to the song you want.

I know personal digital curating, sometimes called narrowcasting, isn’t new: We read only what we want, listen to news that reifies our beliefs, etc.

Radio listening is a gentler example, and I wonder what my kids abandon by seldom trying the radio.

My pandemic work pattern for the past year and a half, since I was home, included tuning in Friday afternoons to WXPN 88.5’s Funky Friday.

What discoveries! I gained a new perspective on The Spinners: How did I forget how great “The Rubberband Man” and “Games People Play” are? Do these songs, in fact, deserve a spot in my now bloated top 100 songs?

Locked into my playlists, would I have come across other Funky Friday gems, like the amazing “The Numbers Game” by Thievery Corporation?

Browsing other stations in my car, would I have developed a late-in-the-game interest in The Killers? How would I have ever stumbled across “Watch The Girl Destroy Me” by Possum Dixon?

It’s not always a win. I hung in listening to 102.9 WMGK’s Philly 500 over Memorial Day Weekend only to reach the appalling conclusion: A Peter Frampton song at the top. “Who are these voters?” I seethed.

Still, though, I got something out of it (at the least, it gave me a way to work toward a conclusion here). And with “Stairway to Heaven” at #2, the list reinforced the wisdom I displayed long ago when I made Led Zeppelin IV my first vinyl purchase at the Berlin (NJ) Farmer’s Market for $2 in about 1980.

Sure, I have my playlist. It’s my all-time favorite songs. It started as a top 100. Now it’s a top 200. Maybe I should freeze it in time, so nothing gets added.

On my list, nothing will supplant the mighty Zeppelin. My days of taking random calls from wacky old friends are likely over too. But if I don’t scan through the stations occasionally, that top 100/200 will remain frozen in time, and I suppose I will too.

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Got Moderna #2 last week. How weird is this to say about getting a shot?: It was an enjoyable experience.

The whole happening at Camden County College, both times I went, was great, and that’s even though I was a bad patient each time. First time, I was an hour late. I got what I deserved: They pranked me. A nurse at the check-in station told me since I was so late they had canceled my appointment. I was crestfallen, and I looked it. She waited a beat and then broke into a smile and said, “April Fools’!” Of course (dummy!), it was April Fools’ Day, and the nurses all cracked up. They got me!

Second time, I forgot my vaccine card, even though I wrote “BRING CARD” in my planner. As I gushed apologies to the first person I talked to, I was assured it was no problem. They said they would make it work, and, after checking my id, they did. A friendly nurse handing me my second card told me to simply staple the two cards together.

Got to see the CCC gym converted to this mass vaccine clinic. It was incredibly organized, from the parking lot to the exit door. The place was relaxed, even though it had a celebratory atmosphere, an aura of triumph! (See below.)

Got to see medical professionals and volunteers upbeat and happy–man, do they deserve it–as they worked with people for what felt like a powerful greater good.

Got high-level medical advice from one of those people, a gentleman who told me, candidly, “Drink a shit-ton of water.” (I did, and I lucked out and had little reaction to either shot.)

Got a teeny little shot both times. “Is that it?” I asked. You don’t even feel it, trypanophobes.

Got to listen to pump-it-up tunes like “September” by Earth, Wind, & Fire.

Got to see people dancing around to those tunes, keeping up morale, including a woman in a multicolored clown wig and outfit. I just had to go up to her and say, “You’re making it work!”

Got to see a bunch of nice people. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a bunch of people period, and a bunch of nice people? But how could you not be nice? People welcomed questions, held doors for each other, let someone go ahead of them. Workers and volunteers looked for the confused and directed them and sought the anxious and calmed them.

Got to thank people–everybody from the parking lot security at CCC to the nurse who brightly told me my 15-minute wait was over and I could split. It seemed right to do that, to thank every one of them, people giving time and effort so we can turn the corner on this terrible pandemic.

Got to think during that 15-minute sit, putting away my phone and watching the dancing woman in the clown wig and giving myself a minute. There are foul people who have been making money and building fame by promoting the idea that America can’t do it.

I had fun getting a vaccine

BS to those foul people, I say. We can do it.

And we are.

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Everything’s been all screwed up. You know what I mean, so I’ll spare you another listsicle of your Top 10 Life Disruptions.

But in our weary world, is that a bright spot I see? Because so many of us have spent the last year rolling out of bed and walking into another room for work or school, have stayed out of the bars, have wrapped up dinner in the kitchen at 8:00 rather than in a restaurant at 10:00, have finished guzzling a few episodes of Three’s Company at 9:30 instead of a 10:30 movie, have decided against even going out (dammit, these listsicles pop up like mushrooms nowadays)–because of all these things, it appears we might be getting more sleep.

An observational study of cell phone data appearing in the Journal of Medical Internet Research indicated that despite all the other nonsense, we may at least be getting some shuteye. Based on about 2.8 million observations, the researchers concluded, “The average estimated sleep duration increased sharply in the months after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

So, whoopie. Like many, many of you, I’m on one year+ of work-at-home duty. But that light out there… I got my first shot–Moderna–last week. I had few side effects, and I’m teed up for shot #2 in a few weeks. Spring is here. People in are becoming accustomed to mask-wearing and social-distancing. Restaurants are opening.

With all the devastation, it’s difficult to write the positives, but our pre-pandemic culture was sleep-deprived and running on Red Bull and coffee. Now, after a year of five-second, slipper-clad commutes, of getting up later because of that reduced time on the road or in the train or bus, we’ve cashed in on extra zzzs.

Because I stopped doing my daily 40- to 45-minute-one-way train commute, I started messing with the alarm clock. In the early summer I changed my wake-up time from 6:50 to 7:00. Then to 7:15. When I try to calculate it, during the quarantine I bet I’ve gotten an extra 5,000 minutes of sleep, or way more than three full days.

(Kids may not be seeing the same benefit–the median age of the study seemed to be 35–because while they too have had reduced errands and activities, I feel life has morphed into one long perpetual weekend to them.)

I also don’t want to suggest that more sleep has meant less work. Many people have likely worked more raw hours over the past year. Of course many people have also juggled working and parenting in ways previously unimaginable.

Eh, and for me, getting more sleep is a mixed bag anyway. I’ve always been firmly lined up with Edgar Allan Poe, who said, “Sleep, those little slices of death, how I loathe them.” At night, the dragons and demons emerge. Paranoia and abandonment and treachery and loss and despair.

Then I wake. Yes, it’s mentally exhausting, but, dammit, physically, I’m on my game!

You’re increasingly seeing stories about how we are returning to some new form of normalcy. It’ll be weird, It’ll be different. But we might all be rested up and ready to face it.

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When you go through old school picture day photos, memories return, even if you can’t for the life of you remember who half those people were–or even sometimes have trouble finding yourself.

What tales they tell.

In the fall, on his way home from practice on a rainy day, my high school junior Zachary skidded out on his bike. His face was the first thing to hit the asphalt.

One of our town angels gathered him and the bike up–thank you, James!–and brought him home. He was all banged up. I can at times embrace the aw-rub-some-dirt-in-it mentality, but when we got him into the upstairs bathroom and looked over the damage, we realized this thing might not heal properly. A scar isn’t the worst of things, but it’s different if it’s a result of parental negligence.

Taking him to Urgent Care was the right call, because he ended up getting eight stitches.

He was fine, though, playing in the soccer season opener two days later and even taking a ball right in the face–he had to convince the ref he was doubled over not because he was concussed but because he just had his face sewn together.

But the week of the accident was also the week of school picture time. The heck with it, we said: We sent him. And we got this:

Uh… yah. 950, 951, 952–some story. So what is the tale being told here?:

• “They told me I could fight my way to the front of the picture line… so I listened. Oh, I was the last kid photographed.”
• “A face only a mother could love–and even then only that one side of it.”
• “I told you to shoot my good side!”
• “I’m literally the poster child for bike helmets!'”
• “Nothing to see here.”
• “When you have a school photo like this, the message is clear: My parents don’t love me.”
• “Hasn’t anyone ever heard of Photoshop?”
• “Didn’t the pandemic prevent stuff like this?”
• “So this kid walks into a bar… face first.”
• “Dang it, I am smiling! You try smiling with this contusion on your countenance!”
• “Once upon a time… I learned that the street is way harder than my face.”
• “Sure I have a girlfriend! She just lives kind of far away–uh, in Canada, in, uh western Canada. That’s why you never see her.”
• And, of course, “You should see the other guy.”

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I watched the two-day snowstorm this week, and I also watched my high school junior sit diligently at the kitchen table, learning remotely. I thought how I can still remember the school closing numbers for not only Eastern High School but Berlin Community School: 579 and 578.

In a much different time, marked by different media, on snowy days we would get up and turn on the radio and listen as an announcer, over a grainy AM signal, would rattle through the list of schools that had closed because of the snow.

The anticipation built as he went into the 500s. We had looked outside and seen the flakes, thick and white, with no reasonable chance of stopping. We knew school had to be closed.

On those days, often it was. Our expectations would meet up with the meteorological predictions of the previous night, and the announcer would call it for us.

Other days, tragedy. The announcer would run the corner of 570 like a horse on the home stretch: “570, 571, 572, 573, 574, 575, 576, 577…” and then, cruelly, he would skip ahead to “…582, 583.” How could our schools be the only schools that were open?! Woe! Woe!

Some days there was the “tie,” the unsatisfying conclusion. Slush. “577 two hours late,” the voice would utter. Two hours? What could we do with two hours? We were already awake and riled, so we couldn’t sleep in. No point in getting cold and soaked for a mere two-hour snowball fight. None of the adventures of the day could be pursued. Nothing made sense.

Was it worse when we never made it to the numbers? I remember going to bed several times after the news had predicted a big storm–I would be almost as giddy and restless as on Christmas Eve.

I would awaken early. It would always be dark. Something felt wrong–it was too dark. I would creep to the window, draw in a breath, and pull aside the shades. I still recall the scarring sight: The slick, black streets, only damp from some light mist, cast in the wan yellowy lights of the streetlamps. No snow could be seen. There would be school.

Now that we are going through a pandemic, almost everyone has gone through the experience of online learning. Many educators have been predicting that the snow day will be a quaint remembrance, so 20th-century, perhaps.

My teenager certainly didn’t miss a step. He has been fully remote anyway, and on Monday he strode into the kitchen and made himself some toaster strudels and was greeted online, as always, by his enthusiastic teachers and classmates. I do believe in the power and effectiveness of online learning–it’s my career!–and during this wintry week, even those students who chose hybrid learning were working only remotely.

There are now no disruptions to education. No frustrating administrative re-configuring. No family spring break plans changed or school years extended. The school day happens inexorably, and then the kids can go outside at 3:00 o’clock for their fun.

It’s a pity, really.

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I started writing this a few weeks ago, right after the last weekend of the NFL regular season. A few things have happened since, but I’ll stay the course.

2020 saw many a hope and dream crushed, including those who had thought their kids were fast-tracking to sports glory. The pandemic ended youth seasons, froze recruiting, and in some colleges led to an extended year of eligibility, causing many frosh to face a peculiar roster glut, as they tried to join teams that didn’t graduate anyone.

Of course, many of these athletes had already reached their peak. I thought about this a lot in the final weekend of the NFL and the playoffs, which I watched, as always, with much interest. This year, I was noticing the chasm between starting quarterbacks and most of the rest, especially because many backups got a shot, even with playoff spots on the line at the end of the season.

Often, these games made for tough watching. Aside from a couple outliers, the backup-led offenses were mostly inept, and the drop-off in talent was stark, almost painful.

I listened to announcers (in between the incessant blather) discuss just how good these players were at previous levels. In college, they were nothing short of amazing–I mean, that’s the word: They put up these amazing numbers and won everything. Some of them played in other pro leagues, where they were nothing short of amazing. You can imagine how good they were in high school–yep, there’s that word again: amazing.

Hearing this while watching the bumbling on-field play, I wondered how difficult it must be for players who had been dominant their entire lives suddenly to drop off the cliff when they took another step forward.

It must be a tough reality to face after years and years of being amazing that you have little place at the next level. In fact, there was even a secondary narrative I noticed: Stud quarterbacks at previous levels who had been moved out of that position in the NFL.

Hell, I’m not criticizing these athletics warriors. They still have reached the pinnacle, and, hey, they’re making a ton of cash. I love the hard-work quest for excellence in sports–or anything–and believe the journey is its own reward.

But watching them, thinking about the hours they spent, made me wonder about the quixotic quest of many parents of young athletes, rushing breathlessly forward without considering that for the vast majority, it will end much earlier than they think. The higher, more unrealistic, and more external expectations are, the more painful the thud must be for the kid.

It was a stark reminder that in my experience with sports, there are big jumps in levels. Young athletes often bump against the ceiling of their current level rather abruptly, in nearly all cases not only before the pros, but before college. In tough cases, kids peak before high school: You know, the sixth-grade playground god who sits the bench in high school.

In these NFL games, it must be surreal for the old hometown fans to gather ’round when they hear that the local boy is going to finally play and then watch a game that’s too fast, too much for him. They’ll remember the high school state title, the pride of the town, like it was a million years ago.

For me, it’s enjoyable to work with kids who are giving their all to be the best they can. It’s less enjoyable to talk to some parents who, often with a maniacal gleam in their eyes, see their kids as destined for high-level greatness and have, all by themselves, set the expectation mark at those heights: scholarships and all the rest.

If the kids themselves, yes, encouraged by the supportive structure around them, want this glory, they should go for it! Most will recognize their limits, and that will be part of the experience.

But as I watched those games, thinking of these players, I realized that we toss around the word “best” a lot, often forgetting what it means and just how few people can occupy the space it fundamentally describes.

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In our house the movie A Christmas Story is, as in many other households, a holiday staple.

In this perfect little movie, Ralphie has several loss-of-youthful-innocence moments. One of the most poignant (mild spoiler alert follows if for some reason you’ve never seen this movie!) is his effort to decode a message to save radio show heroine Little Orphan Annie.

Ralphie has eagerly awaited a special decoder pin’s arrival in the mail. He’ll tune into his favorite radio program, receive Annie’s coded message, and then use the decoder. This is important stuff!

He finally receives the decoder package (making him forget immediately about a narrow escape from bullies), hears the message, and rushes off to the bathroom, “the only room in the house where a boy of nine can sit in privacy and decode.”

While little brother Randy whines at the door about needing to use the bathroom, the narrator recounts Ralphie’s decoding. The tension builds as he deciphers Annie’s message, letter by letter, imagining he might be saving the world!

That’s until the whole message is clear: B-E-S-U-R-E-T-O-D-R-I-N-K-Y-O-U-R-O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E.

A stunned Ralphie realizes he’s been duped: The message was merely “a crummy commercial” for the program sponsor. Ralphie throws down the pencil and decoder and leaves the bathroom, going “out to face the world again, wiser.”

It’s another bittersweet moment where he is yanked into the sphere of mature knowledge.

For some chunk of Americans, their Ralphie-Ovaltine moment is coming. I don’t think it’s funny. I’m not gloating about it. I don’t envy them it.

At some point, these Ralphies will be engaged, perhaps feverishly, with recollecting a lingering aspect of the chaos of the past four years of this president, and it’ll hit them.

Perhaps it will be when one of the many inside stories of a presidency driven by selfishness and greed and antagonism comes to light. They will hear about just who walked and tarnished the halls of their White House the past few years. They will see clearly the pardoning of those who abused their trust.

Perhaps, my god, they sent money the past few months to “fight” the bizarre claims of election conspiracy. They will see how a purported-drainer-of-the-swamp created the deepest fen in modern political history with their money.

Perhaps they’ll read a book about autocratic or fascist propaganda. Or they’ll read–or re-read–1984. They’ll realize that the person who hugs the flag tightest may be the least patriotic, the least American. They will see that a long and unfortunately reliable way to fool people is with what many call “The Big Lie,” which is that if you tell a monster lie, a preposterous untruth, and repeat it enough, some group of people will come to believe it.

Perhaps they will not have their moment for many years. Perhaps it will come when their kids or even grandkids will read about this era, read about how a purveyor of more than 20,000 lies set up a sloppy, stupid lie about the integrity of the U.S. election and how many enablers went along with it to get votes, and a young face will look up to them asking, “You certainly didn’t believe that, did you?”

Faced with that question, what will our Ralphies do when they think back on the unpatriotic and undemocratic actions of the past four years? Will they admit their culpability?

Or, even with so much time having passed, will they follow dutifully from the wreckage of integrity of the past four years and simply lie themselves?

Regardless, I feel for these future Ralphies, as many will have a moment when their belief in a movement will be abruptly shattered, splintered by the searing shock of knowledge that the past four years had been largely a sham: a bloated, “crummy” commercial.

Tags: politics & government, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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