Back before

Last week I found my old birth certificate and I was interested to see the part where my father's profession and place of employment were listed. "Kind of business or industry: Granite High School" and "Usual Occupation: School Teacher and Foot Ball Coach." He was 25.

Coincidentally it was also my 56th birthday last week. Yessir I'm 56 born in '56! I drove out to the place in Holladay where our house no longer stands (it was replaced years ago by a library) and looked at Mt. Olympus. It's the same view I remember as a little girl, lying on my back on a field of grass, staring east.

So my dad went on to have this singular career, and I won't lie. A lot of the time it was a full-on, wind-in-your-hair, hang-on-for-the-best-bitchin'-roller-coaster-ride-in-your-whole-damn-life blast. But I cherish the time before most of all. The time before when he was young and growing rows of tomatoes in the backyard and selling shoes at Sears on the weekends in addition to being a "School Teacher" and a "Foot Ball Coach," wondering where it would all go.

That game

Anyway my parents, my brothers, our spouses and I got together for the game Saturday.

I know.

Sometime during the third quarter I finally said, "Well, the good news is that my neighbor is dead." This was met with a second big helping of stunned silence--the first helping, of course, being the epic implosion of the boys in blue. So I had to explain that while I loved this neighbor and still miss him, especially at Christmas when he dressed up like Santa Claus and delivered jolly gifts to everyone, he totally brought the crazy when it came to loving the Utes. And when they beat us, he let me have it. Over and over and over. So it was like getting beat up twice by the Utes.

Oh, Old Neighbor. I wish with all my heart you still lived around the corner from me. But okay. I'm so so happy you weren't in church yesterday.

Wherein I prove that I'm really kind of a crappy person at heart

So I often give money to panhandlers even though they say you shouldn't because really. Why not? It ain't much and it's not my business what they do with it.

Anyway. As I was driving out of the Smith's Parking Lot today I saw a guy standing there at the entrance, so I got out a dollar. But when I got closer I noticed he was wearing a Utah Utes hat. And suddenly I went never mind.

It's almost fall, people. Fall as in football. Old memories die hard.

Next year . . .

. . . I'm totally gonna live-blog the Super Bowl so I can discuss how EMBARRASSING it must be for all those boys to show up at the same event wearing the exact same outfit. Looking forward to that.

Right now I'm trying to decide if I should go read a new YA novel about a teenage Sherlock Holmes called DEATH CLOUD (I think) or watch GLEE. Feel free to advise.

Feeling GRUMPY

NOT to be judgmental or anything, but I'm feeling kinda annoyed with the guys announcing the Dallas/Vikings game right now. They're pretty much circling the wagons around Favre, who's recently been accused of sexually harassing a female Jets employee.

MEMO TO GRANDPA FAVRE: Dude. Did you really think you could get away with sexting these days? Only someone who's really OLD would think that. Oh. WAIT.

Anyway, the announcers are all he's a player's player, he always shows up for the game even if his dad is dying and his wife has breast cancer, it's none of our business what he does off the field, we're not here to talk about people's morals anyway, blah blah blah.

All of this may be perfectly true. And no one admires a damn good player more than I do. But implicit in all of this inane announcer banter is (I think) a condemnation of the woman involved somehow, to which I can only say no one should have to put up with a pass from Favre (you saw this coming) EXCEPT HIS RECEIVERS.

Ten years ago today

So I have basically made a career (I think) of NOT telling people who my dad is, although I think everyone who reads this blog (thank you, I love you) knows that he used to coach football at BYU for a billion decades.

Anyway. I saw this article (see link below) in the D-news this morning, and it brought back a lot of memories. I got a call that other morning (ten years ago) from my dad saying he was calling a press conference to announce his retirement. That was the first I'd heard of it, because in truth the decision was a sudden one. I told Ken and the kids, and then I told my running partners Kathy and Sally while we sat on Kathy's porch listening to the birds and early morning sprinklers. For some reason I tried to do a cartwheel on the lawn and fell on my head. But I digress.

Later I drove to the stadium and went into the locker room with my mom and Dad's secretary, Shirley, where he broke the news to his players and a few of the sports guys from the papers. It was a very, very emotional moment--one of those times when you realize that life as you've always known had irrevocably shifted.

That last season was more painful than heady, although you can't complain about how it all ended that night in Rice Stadium. (My great friend Becky Thomas called that night, SCREAMING into the phone, saying, "WHO IS YOUR DAD'S SCRIPT WRITER?!" And then we decided if they ever made a movie out of his life, we voted for Gene Hackman to play my dad.)

As for me, I finally confessed that final season my lifelong desire to stand on the sidelines and watch a game up close and personal. My dad said why not? And why did you never ask before?

I can still hear helmets crashing, can still smell the scent of the field.

Here's the link to Jeff Call's piece.

what i did (with one hand) today

1. ate wings--many, many, many insanely many wings

2. watched the super bowl--i was pulling for my boyfriend, peyton manning, but you can't be sad the saints won

3. also watched a little bit of the sound of music due to the fact that i was too tired to change the channel--watching SOM with my son gave me a chance to observe that he should be very happy i never made him wear lederhosen made out of drapes

4. he agreed

This is one Monday . . .

. . . when I'm glad my dad isn't coaching anymore.

Strange, though, how old habits die hard. Like, I've been avoiding the papers, the TV, the radio so that I won't accidentally have to hear about how CRAPPY BYU played on Saturday (it's true, though--they did play like crap). All the old instincts of self-preservation kicked in, and all I could do was keep my head low, just like when I was a kid.

Sometimes I think I should write SOMETHING about what it was like to have a dad who coached college football. But I've been reluctant to look like I was trading on his name. And, frankly, I've always been more interested in writing about commonly shared experiences than the exceptional ones.

Still. When I told the story tonight about my sixteenth birthday and how Don Ho sang happy birthday to me (I was the one wearing an orange muu-muu) in a night club because one of my dad's former players ran the joint, my kids said they'd never heard it. And that made me think I should write some of that stuff down.

Re settings (sort of)

My friend Louise and I have been thinking about places we wish we could have seen--Paris in the twenties, for example. Or Southern California in the forties when Orange county was filled with actual orange trees. Or my Salt Lake City neighborhood in the 1890's. Or London when Shakespeare was writing (in the spring, though--not in the winter).

Here's the place I'd really like to go--Logan in the late forties and early fifties when my Dad was playing football at USU. I remember something the late Hack Miller said in a column once--that pound for pound my dad was the "mightiest football player God ever made." I would have loved to watch him play and hear him lay a hit on someone.

Where would you like to go? And why?

What I Did Today Instead of Write

1. Go grocery shopping
2. Fill up the car
3. Take assorted crap out of my car such as a box of kitty litter, a present for my niece, and several empty Dr. Pepper cans
4. Make chicken popovers for my niece's shower
5. Drive to Bountiful and buy cupcakes for my niece's shower from Parsons Bakery, which is usually an outstanding bakery, but okay I really have to give today's dry and messy-looking cupcakes a failing grade
6. Give my niece a shower (actually my mother-in-law threw the shower--we just used my house)
7. Watch the end of the BYU/Air Force game
8. Watch the Utah/SDSU game
9. Read IN TOUCH magazine to find out if Angelina is pregnant again and if Brad does, in fact, feel trapped