Hope Springs Eternal

My youngest son Danny played football, and other sports, before I crushed his spirit as an 11-year old by not praising him sufficiently when he scored a touchdown once.  That's what he told me as a 12-year old, after he'd been on a series of secret visits to a psychologist or psychologists in the pay of his mother when she was busy extrajudicially burying my fatherhood during the lengthy and financially crushing divorce wars.

He would never play sports again, this tender adolescent solemnly told me.  Besides being a pile of crap (what young boy talks like this? That's an agenda-driven repressed memories "expert" talking through the mouth of a vulnerable child), that is too bad because he was a good football player.

He was fast enough, although not as fast as my oldest boy, and cerebral enough, although not as good a student of the game as my middle child.  But he seemed to combine the most excellent traits of the other children in a superior blend of athleticism and execution and he could excel on the field of play.

I well remember him breaking off a 40-yard touchdown run as a fullback, kicking a PAT to seal a win, and knocking a halfback out of bounds on the one-yard line on a power sweep running away from his OLB position to preserve a precarious lead in the game's last minute of play.  Your birthday is coming up, Dan, and I hope to see you then for lunch at the Lost Dog.