Running Around in Circles March 9, 2008
Posted by wes285 in Appreciate the Prose.Tags: Family, Growing Up, Home, Life, Mistakes, Running in Circles
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I’m halfway through my life and I’m never quite sure if I’m doing anything right until I’m completely done doing it wrong.
-Danny Concannon from The West Wing
Okay, I’m only about a third of the way through my life and I’m pretty sure it isn’t everything that I’m doing wrong. Just a lot of them. I wish there was a guidebook that told you what you’re supposed to do in any situation. But this is real life, and I guess it’s part of growing up. I’m just afraid one day I’m going to wake up and be 50 still wondering if I’m doing this right.
I turned 23 about a month ago. Ever since I’ve been walking around in a bit of a daze wondering what the hell I’m doing. It isn’t that I feel lost. It’s that I’m walking around in circles and every time I make another round I notice another new thing that I don’t like. That new thing makes me force myself out of the circle. But, somehow, I always end up back on the beaten path. I don’t know. Maybe we are just the way we are. There are the little things that we can change, but the major things, that’s just who we are. Part of our personality. What makes us the individuals that we are.
One of my good friends was back home this weekend, so I was back to see him. I ended up staying at my parents’ house for the night and spent most of the next day back home running errands I had planned to do in D.C. They’re only about a half hour drive away and its a nice change of pace. I find it’s a good place to go when I’m in one of my moods. I don’t always come back with the answers I’m looking for. But for a short time, I’m able to put down whatever weight I have on my back and let things be.
Both pairs of my dress shoes needed a shine, so I brought them back with me to use my dad’s kit (yes, I shine my own shoes, it’s what sophisticated gentlemen do). Like a responsible adult, I put newspaper down on the floor so the polish wouldn’t get all over the kitchen floor. My dad walked by, and being my dad, told me to make sure not to let the polish fall off the newspaper when I was finished. I gave him my usual quizzical “what do you think I am?” look to which he responded with an anecdote from when I was about 5 years old. I was eating a cookie or something and like a proper 5 year old was dropping crumbs all over my shirt. My dad and I had the following exchange:
Dad: Be careful when you get up. You have crumbs all over your shirt.
Me: Don’t worry, they’ll just all fall to the ground when I get up.
He didn’t say what happened after I made that comment. But I’m willing to bet that I got up, dusted my shirt off and went to go find a toy.
Like I said, I can just go home and let things be.
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Appreciate the Prose:
Angels Unawares, I found this through another blog, The Last Spartan, that I read regularly. Listen to what the old lady has to say.
Warheads (the candy, not bombs) November 12, 2007
Posted by wes285 in Observations, Sports.Tags: Baseball, Bitter, Growing Up, Ice Hockey, Little League, Steve Buckhantz, Sweet, Warheads
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When I was a kid, my favorite candy was Warheads. Nobody remembers the Warhead for the sweet lemony flavor. You ate a Warhead because, for some twisted reason, you enjoyed subjecting yourself to the facial contortions the sour taste would cause.
Why is it that that bitter taste in your mouth always overpowers the sweet, savory flavors? This isn’t anything groundbreaking. I’m sure cavemen had the same feelings. This is true for food, relationships, just about everything. I have some very vivid memories of good times. But, the most vivid are always of something bad. Something painful. I can recount with incredible detail when my mom was diagnosed with cancer. But I couldn’t tell you when or how I realized my mom didn’t have cancer anymore. Why is that bitter taste so much stronger than the sweet one?
I went to the Caps game on Saturday. If you’ve ever been to an NHL game, during at least one of the intermissions they let mites or squirts from a local club play for 5-10 minutes. This is the ultimate thrill for a 7 year-old kid. Playing on the same surface as your idols with the entire arena cheering you on. That’s as close as it gets to the scene played over and over again in driveways and basements. Less than 10 seconds to go in overtime, Wesley intercepts the puck at center ice. Five seconds. Splits the defense and is in all alone. 3 seconds. Dekes the goalie out of his pads. He shoots! He SCORES! And the crowd goes wild HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! CAPS WIN! CAPS WIN THE CUP!
Seeing those tykes got me all nostalgic about playing sports when I was a kid. I played just about every sport growing up. Soccer, baseball, basketball, ice hockey. And I can’t remember being on a single losing team. Those were good times. But then, as I thought about it more I realized that, despite all the fondness, the memories most burned into my mind are of losing.
Throughout elementary school my little league team was one of the better teams in our district. We were constantly hitting the 5 run per inning limits and making other kids quit baseball. There were always two other teams that would actually give us a game. One year we won the championship, but I can’t tell you a single thing about that game other than what is in the local newspaper article that is still tacked up on my cork board in my bedroom at my parent’s house. What I can remember is the year after when we lost to that same team. I remember the last play of the game. Bottom of the 6th, I had just scored on a pop fly to make it a two run game. We had runners on 2nd and 3rd. Line drive right beyond the shortstop. Guy on third scores easily. Play over. We need one more run. Then all of a sudden Danny, who was on second comes screaming around 3rd completely ignoring the 3rd base coach’s signal to stop. The left fielder gets to the ball and throws a bull to the catcher. Out at home by a mile, game over.
I can’t remember a single detail of the win the year before, but that moment is crystal clear in my mind. We were Carolina blue that year and we all got a kick out of wearing Carolina blue eye black. And we lost.
My favorite sport has always been ice hockey. It was my best sport growing up and I wish I was still playing. I was never the best player on my team, but always one of the best. Always second or third in goals and assists. In high school the game I remember most was against my home high school senior year. I went to a magnet school on the other side of the county. We had never beaten them and the friends that I had on that team never let me forget it.
This game, we played close the whole way through. We were down 4-3 late in the game and there was a mad scramble in front of our net. Graham, our goalie, tried to cover the puck up to get a whistle, but it somehow squirted out. I was right there and tried to shovel it ever so delicately back into his glove. Just as the puck would have slid under is glove, he picked it up and the puck slid into the net. DAGGER (thanks Steve Buckhantz). 5-3. It didn’t matter that I scored my second goal of the game minutes after that to make it 5-4 and then almost tied it 2 minutes later as the horn sounded. See, if I hadn’t scored on my own goal, we never would have to to try to tie it as the game ended.
That last year was my best year individually, but I can still see myself shoveling that own goal in.
Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of great sports memories as a kid. But for some reason, the painful ones are clearer. Why does that bitter taste overpower the sweet taste? And more importantly, how do you get rid of the bitter taste?
