Yeah, I might be one of those people (Actually I'm probably all of those people).
What they don't see however, is the grueling little things that my kids have to go through in order to keep the journey rolling. Sometimes I make them get up before 10am. Sometimes one of them has to go without a computer for five minutes while I check our flight status. Sometimes I make them have something other than Pizza Hut or Jack in the Box for dinner, and once, just once, I made them go to Major League Baseball's All Star Fan Fest.
I'm guessing from the above picture you can identify the problem. While I'll admit that none of my kids really had any interest in the Fan Fest, I had one who felt it particularly important to voice her displeasure with the rampant use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball today. Or maybe she was voicing her displeasure with her sister. I don't remember, but really, how bad could the day be? I'm holding a Build-A-Bear bag. How bad can your day be if you've been to Build-A-Bear? Maybe I should try and explain that to her.
Well that didn't work. So now that's Build-A-Bear and the world's biggest baseball that haven't taken her mind off the problems facing sports these days. I thought about taking her over to the batting cages, but that would probably just remind her of Barry Bond's questionable home run record. I considered taking her to the area where you could practice stealing bases, but that was only likely to remind her how drugs have made today's players faster. Perhaps what was needed was some sympathy for the dilemma that players face today. Maybe what we really needed to do, was find my daughter some synthetic substances of her own, so she could see what all the fuss was about.
(What did you think I was going to shoot her up with steroids? Go back to that first picture and tell me that that's somebody you'd like to make prone to fits of rage.)
So baby, now that you've sampled some synthetic substances of your own, is it easier to understand that nothing is entirely cut and dry when it comes to performance enhancing drugs? Can you move past the things that are bringing you down, and just get back to the pure enjoyment of the game?
That's my girl! I'm very proud of my daughter's ability to take a complicated issue, study both sides of it carefully, evaluate the options, and then have her thought process completely altered by a frozen dairy treat. It's that kind of critical thinking that will help you understand the trickier issues in sports. It will help you understand that most things have a bigger picture that you need to consider. Most importantly, it will help you to understand that your real purpose here...
is to help your Dad rack up more of the free stuff they're giving away. One pack of cards per person. Ha! There's five of us! (We should have had more kids.)
