Growing up there were many things I did that I would call character builders (AKA miserable experiences). One of those things, football, was at the top of the list and my experiences with it were a reason I was not going to allow my kids to play football. I had the brilliant idea when I was in sixth grade that I should play tackle football. I always wanted to be a quarterback and had the irrational confidence to think that I could be the starting qb for Byron Center’s sixth and seventh grade rocket football team. Unfortunately, I had two things going against me, the first being the coaches son was already penciled in as the starting qb and the second thing was that I lacked the requisite amount of athletic ability and arm strength to play quarterback or any other staring position on the field. I like to think of myself as a late bloomer and it’s likely I won’t reach my full potential until my sixties. My recollection of that portion of my life had me going to school, doing my paper route and then hustling to football practice, not sure which activity I hated more but I didn’t run the risk of being beat to a pulp by Mike Kerkstra when I was delivering papers or attending school. Mike was a lunatic and ironically our paths would cross again when I took a job with Bruce Vansolkema working on a celery farm, which was another “character building” experience. There are two occurrences that season that really stand out to me. The first was when we played Kellogsville and for some reason I was in the game (it’s likely we were down by at least five touchdowns at this point) and playing on the defensive line. The kid across from me had a mustache and sat on me every time I crumpled to the ground. It wasn’t much of a surprise that I saw him drive away in a car after the game. The second memory that stands out is when my friend Greg Schruer, who I somehow talked into signing up for football with me, made a touchdown saving tackle against Allendale when he was on the kick off team. He actually just kind of ran along with the pile of kids, fell down, and happen to have the ball carrier trip over him at the two yard line. However, the coach didn’t see it the way I saw it and he used Greg as an example of how he wanted everyone else to play, he actually huddled the players going out to the field on defense up and pulled Greg aside and pointed him out to them. Pretty sure Allendale scored on the next play.

Earlier this summer Parker told me he wanted to play tackle football, I have no idea where he came up with the idea, but in hindsight I should have said no. However, if there is anyone besides Aiden who needs some character building in an attempt to overcome extensive coddling from Shirley, it’s Parker. Luckily I found a helmet at Play it Again Sports that I thought fit perfectly, it only made his ears bleed a little bit when you took it off or put it on. Parker’s coach emailed the team members parents instructing them to make sure their kids engaged in one hour of helmet time a day to prepare for having to wear a helmet during practice. So, I told Parker to make sure he wore his helmet an hour a day to prep for the rigors of wearing a helmet. This lasted maybe a day or two before he left it laying around and Max, our Australian Shepard who is a complete dick but super cute, chewed the chin pads out of it. Fast forward to last week when practice began on Tuesday. The first day of practice they did not wear their helmets but the second day they were going to be wearing them. Before we left for practice Parker flipped out because his helmet was too wiggly due to the fact he didn’t have chin pads. I”m pretty sure I had tasked Shirley with the getting replacement chin pads and somewhat lost it when it became evident the helmet was almost as useless as the Detroit Lions. I went into some diatribe about how I have to do everything when it comes to signing the kids up for sports, camps, and activities, which I do. However, to her credit Shirley does work a lot, and not just a lot more than me, because that’s not a high bar, but a lot for most people. On top of that she pretty much leaves me alone and doesn’t interfere with my hobbies, other than scheduling a dinner in Saugatuck tomorrow night with her boss and her bosses husband which I am not looking forward to and interferes with pickle ball. Ultimately, Parker missed practice as he and I searched for a helmet. I was in a foul mood as a result of Parker missing practice and having to drive all over town at the last minute to not find a helmet. I was so mad that not even a trip to Culver’s, after waiving the white flag on the search for a helmet, could make me feel better.

Shirley ended up tracking down a replacement helmet for Parker and I dropped him off to practice on Thursday before heading to play tennis. All seemed to be right with the world and I was by far the best player on the DU tennis courts that night, granted I was going against a guy in his sixties a guy whose average serve speed was 3mph and a guy who was wearing running shoes to play tennis, but I dominated. Doubles isn’t typically my preference when it comes to tennis but since it was hotter than the center of the sun I was ok with it. When I looked at my phone after tennis I had a text from Parker’s coach that Parker wasn’t feeling well. I also had a text from Shirley that Parker only lasted 15 minutes. This didn’t stop me from going to Railtown Brewery after tennis and when I returned home all the lights were off. Sometimes I think Shirley sees me coming down the driveway and turns all the lights off in an attempt to avoid my advances but it was possible that three days of getting up early to get the kids off to school had caught up with her and she was actually sleeping. Regardless, I was unable to question her about Parker’s convenient illness. However, the next day she explained that the helmet Parker had on loan didn’t fit right and kept coming down over his eyes. We rigged up his old helmet with pads from the loaner and Friday’s practice went off without a hitch. The first actual Monday of the school year was yesterday due to the kids starting school last Tuesday and stupidly I did not plan ahead so I had to stop at the store on the way home to pick up some stuff for dinner before I brought Parker to practice. Shirley sent me the following text “I am pretty tied up and can’t help much get Parker ready. Are you home soon?” Try not at all, there was no assistance and I had to get dinner going and get Parker set up for practice, fortunately I am a great driver and didn’t kill two pedestrians walking down the road who took me completely off guard on my way to Duncan Lake Middle School to drop Parker off. One gave me a surprised/dirty look when I narrowly missed the pair probably because he pooped his pants a little bit.

We were the last to arrive and I had to put Parker’s cleats on which were in quadruple knots thanks to the handiwork of Shirley. Houdini would have struggled unknotting those shoe strings and I was at an 11 on the 10 point exasperation scale after double knotting both of Parker’s cleats and trying to send him on his way. However, his helmet didn’t fit right and I had to spend minutes we didn’t have getting it properly adjusted. Finally he waddled over to practice and began to participate with his punctual teammates. He lined up wrong for the first drill and gave minimal effort. The coach yelled at him and not knowing he had just arrived asked him if he was tired already. Parker being chastised in front of his teammates opened up a lot of wounds that I thought had healed so I retreated to my truck to have a good cry. I did have to move my truck from its original position so I could see practice better and at the first water break I saw a kid retreat to where my truck previously was parked. I jumped out of my truck and headed over to where the kid disappeared behind a different truck hoping I wouldn’t discover Parker. Sure enough it was him and he immediately began crying claiming his stomach hurt when I stumbled upon him (maybe tacos before practice wasn’t such a good idea). I only have one approach, it’s the what the fuck lose your shit approach. Fortunately for Parker Shirley arrived seconds after I lit into him because she was going to watch practice and drop Aiden and Parker off to me so I could head out to Green Lake.

Had it been up to me, Parker would have immediately returned to practice but Shirley let him sit in her vehicle and calm down. I moved my truck next to them but that only exacerbated the problem and eventually I left to get gas and a much needed six pack of beer on my way to the lake. However, I didn’t exactly trust that Shirley would make Parker go back to practice so I took a detour on my way to the lake to check up on things. Sure enough Parker was sitting next to Shirley on the “sidelines” as his team practiced. Frustrated, I decided to head to the lake so I could start putting a dent in my six pack. Eventually I received a few photos and video clips of Parker participating in practice from Shirley. I should have asked her to hold up the days newspaper in the background to prove that they were current photos and video clips. I guess the good news is that despite what looks to be an underwhelming athletic career for the one kid I held out hope for, I still have Max. I’m just going to need Shirley’s help building the training obstacle course in our backyard.

A couple weeks ago my kids and I were coming back from Green Lake. I had NBA radio on, yeah, that’s a thing and they were discussing some of the free agent signings that had taken place and what the contracts were paying out to the newly signed players. Parker then asked me if the players were still paid even if they lost. I responded that their contracts are usually fully guaranteed regardless of how they do on the court. This made very little sense to him and he began to verbalize his displeasure with such an arrangement until his brother piped in from the back seat and responded “Dad’s a bad attorney and he still gets paid!” If I had feelings they would have been hurt. It use to be my kids looked up to me and thought I was awesome at everything I did, even lawyering, but now they realize I am a bald, pathetic, middle aged man whose best years are behind him. Other conversations about my ability have included wether or not I ever win any cases. It’s hard to explain to them that it really isn’t about winning in my line of business, it’s about doing the best you can with very little to work with. It’s like finding road kill and having someone expect you to turn it into a fine dining experience.

While the statement Aiden made about me being a bad lawyer wasn’t entirely accurate, I feel like I”m just okay, like I am with a lot of the things I do in life, he did make a comment that rung incredibly true when we were up in the UP a little over a week ago. We were all eating breakfast when Aiden started saying some not so nice things about one of his younger cousins who lives in Florida. I didn’t correct him since even though it wasn’t nice it was fairly accurate. Regardless, his aunt Lori did say to him “Aiden do you know what the golden rule is?” He didn’t but neither did she. She claimed that it was if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all. For those of you who are like Lori the Golden Rule is “do unto others as you would have them do to you”. Sadly, the golden rule wouldn’t deter Aiden because he doesn’t really care much what people say about him wether it be mean or nice. Shirley went on to say to Aiden that he shouldn’t talk crap about people because the people who hear him talking crap will wonder what he says about them when they aren’t around. Aiden responded “you should hear what my dad says about people when they aren’t around!” Granted, most of the stuff I do say I probably would say to people even if they were around but my kids have become more and more cognizant of what I say, as well as what Shirley says. Fat shaming, off limits. Vegetarians are no longer fair game. My dip shit brother in law, I can probably still blog about him unless my blog starts coming up in his endless internet searches trying to track down the latest conspiracy theory about China and the recent chip shortage. However, Shirley and I can’t discuss him in front of our children any longer which really sucks. It took me two days to get around to bringing up his latest thing, the fact he had to buy a brand new GMC Sierra because they aren’t making them anymore. That’s right, according to him GM as well as the other two thirds of the big three are no longer going to manufacture their most profitable vehicles, pickup trucks. He also indicated that China is going to invade Afghanistan and then Taiwan (where all the chips are made) after that.

It gets better though. Typically my philosophy with him is to not engage. I just let him say whatever stupid thing he is going to say and then move on acting like it was a semi logical statement. However, a sore subject for me is his claim that his use of plex to stream movies for free is not stealing. He claims that his brother has hundreds of movies that he bought the rights to and that he is just using plex to access them. However, this claim that his brother purchased all the content was immediately discredited when my sister indicated that she uses plex to access the full beach body catalogue so she can do workouts. My brother in law is a fat ass and his brother is a certified fat ass. So, there is no way that guy forked over any amount of money to have access to a full catalogue of work out videos.

My brother in law then went into some attempt at an analogy that legitimized his pirating of movies and streaming content. It was similar to me going to the MVP pool with my kids last Friday and walking in when the person doing the check ins had stepped away. My kids are not on my membership and I would have had to pay $10 each to get them into the pool. I justified it because I have been a member at MVP since it opened and they owe me some free shit for my loyalty to them even when they shuttered their doors during COVID and I was still on the hook because I had paid for the entire year up front because I was on my buddies corporate membership. (my analogy was much better than Super Dave’s but I didn’t mention it to him) On top of that, I didn’t need to relive what I went through in July when I took my kids to the Crahen MVP pool. This time there was an attendant checking people in and I had to pony up $20 to get my kids in to the pool. They immediately asked me if they could get dippin dots (the ice cream of the future for the past 30 years) and I said no because it sucks. They ended up getting smoothies and then swimming for roughly 23 minutes before they wanted to go home. When I told them we had just gotten there they claimed there were band aids in the pool along with a number of illegitimate complaints. When I was a kid I would have swam in a pool full of bandaids and STD infested water if the pool had a diving board and a slide. We ended up leaving roughly 45 minutes after our arrival and I couldn’t help but continually obsess about the $20 I had just wasted not including the money I spent on the smoothies they didn’t finish.

The MVP pool trip was in lieu of going to the Ionia Free Fair. I had made the mistake of suggesting a trip there on that particular Friday but we didn’t end up going for some reason I can’t recall. So, on Saturday with the heat index hovering around 95 Shirley and I took the kids and my nephews (Super Dave’s Spawn but much more likable and intelligent) to the Ionia County Free Fair. We split up upon our arrival with Shirley taking the youngsters and me taking Aiden and Parker. I forked over what was likely at least a days wages if not more for most of the people in attendance to purchase tickets for the rides but the good news was that the tickets were going to go a long ways since I wasn’t going to be riding any of the rides. My kids jumped in line for the gravitron which is a ride that pins you up against the wall as the floor drops out due to centrifugal force. I walked over to a bench to sit down and when I looked over to the ride as it was boarding my kids were running towards me screaming and crying. The look on my face probably said it all and they were really hamming it up for me. They both claimed that their stomachs hurt and that they didn’t feel up to getting on the ride. My response was that if they were scared they just needed to admit it instead of coming up with such a lame excuse not to ride the ride. They then went into how they didn’t feel like riding any rides and were ready to go home. That was the last straw I responded by saying “you pull this fucking bullshit all the time” literally that is what I said and it may have taken me out of the running for the 2021 DOY but I had had enough. For some reason it’s still remarkable when I swear in front of them even though they have watched roughly 40 rated R movies (including the most recent Suicide Squad that Shirley let them watch when I was at golf league) and heard the F word over a thousand times. Once we were reunited with Shirley and my nephews they immediately told her what I said and she was all over my ass like white on rice (can you still say that without offending anyone?) This should have been my breaking point but to my credit I did manage to keep it together somewhat despite the extreme heat and high concentration of tattooed people addicted to meth I was unnecessarily exposed to. As penance for my sharp tongue I took my nephews through the fun house which required me to rub up against at least twenty things those tattooed meth addicts had also rubbed up against. After the fun house we grabbed some elephant ears and slushies and got the fuck out of there. Ironically, I heard something on the news about a number of Ionia county fair goers testing positive for Covid that following week, pretty sure Covid exposure was the last thing any of those people needed to worry about.