Little m Long a

Tis the season to be jolly, fa la la la la….la la la la!  It’s the most wonderful time of the year..it’s the hap–happiest season of all!  Oh, you better watch out, you better not cry.  Why?  Because THERE’S NO CRYING IN FOOTBALL!!!  That’s right, people.  In case you haven’t noticed or have been unfortunately locked away in a cellar deprived of any means of communication with the outside world, football season is upon us.  Am I a fan?  Well, I don’t bleed purple and gold, I don’t have season tickets, I’ve never bought the all access season cable pass for the low, low price of $495 bowl games, halftime specials and overtimes not included. Your favorite team is probably subject to blackouts but pay anyway and you can watch The Tennesse Valley Inter City Squad scrimmage practices unless of course you live in Tennesee and wish to see that team because they will then have to be blacked out also…and I have actually mowed the yard on game day.  On the other hand, I can honestly report (though not necessarily proudly) that I have been known to spend more than one contiguous hour, beers in an ice chest beside the chair, to reduce trips to the kitchen and the beanie weanies plated next to me enjoying some gridiron action.  And yes, I have waited for halftime or a prolonged injury timeout to change an odiferous pamper or refill an empty sippy cup.  Yep, come Football Saturday it’s pretty safe to assume that you can find me in very close proximity to the bigscreen, remote in hand switching back and forth between the picture in picture game and the main event game DVR set to capture any of the action I may have inadvertantly missed.  New twist, this year we have a laptop to keep us informed up to the second of any significant game altering events.

The excitement about our attending the games had been building for weeks. Even the afternoon rain showers and the threats of thunderstorms throughout the evening could not dampen their spirits.  (Remind me to tell you sometime about kids and water.) Zane was stoked!  He could hardly contain his excitement about being up close and in the middle of the action.  Zoë was excited though noticeably less.  Her interest level soared when she realized that not only were the football players on the sidelines but also….the cheerleaders.  Zia and the twins could not have been more happy about the fact that Mom had ordered hot dogs.  Even Zander, at 18 months and full of happiness and good intentions found a way to make the evening special for himself.  At one point during the game he turned up missing only to be spied seconds later with the cheerleaders grinning ear to ear offering up our trusty umbrella.  Hey, this gig has got something for everyone in the family and as a family we had an absolute blast.  Our team won! Go Comets! I’m also happy to report that my wife was never called to duty.  The only injury she treated all evening was the nursemaid’s elbow I inadvertantly had given Zia doing helicopter swings.

My grandfather was a saint.  I am convinced that he had to be.  I can’t say as I recall too many theological discussions with the man, nor do I ever recall hearing him pray.  Oh, he went to church every Sunday and always had a little something in his pocket when the offering plate was passed his way but to actually call the man religious I think might be stretching things just a tad.  I do seem to recall on more than one occasion where he invoked the name of the lord, but I think that was usually due to something my brother and I had done to elicit his heavenly pleas.  No, my reasons for believing in his canonization are entirely different.  He taught me how to fish.

There were very few things in his life after my grandmother and golf that he enjoyed more than fishing.  He was old school, too.  A little fourteen foot aluminum boat with a 3 horsepower Johnson outboard motor and live bait, either minnows or crickets, sometimes worms, and a cane pole.  He had an enormous tackle box and several really nice rod and reel combos but I’m not sure I ever saw him use them.  When Papaw put on his straw hat and grabbed his trusty cane pole you could bet your last nickel that we would be having fish for dinner.

When I was a little kid, we had a camp on a little lake about 30 minutes outside of our hometown.  Some of my most fond childhood memories involve weekends spent at that camp.  I can recall my grandfather waking up early in the mornings and preparing his things for a day of fishing.  He could stay gone for hours.  My brother and I always wondered just what he did out on the lake for so long.  Late in the afternoon we would hear that little motor chugging it’s way back to the dock in front of the camp and my brother and I would run down to meet him, eyes wide with excitement.  “Did you catch any?” we would always yell to him long before he could hear us.  We’d repeat the question five or six times before he would finally look up at us and without saying a word hold up a stringer full of the tastiest looking crappie we had ever seen.  I always kind of felt he heard us the first time but enjoyed making us squirm in anticipation.

I’ll never forget the first time he asked if my brother and I wanted to go with him.  We both were screaming, “Yes, yes!!” before he even finished the question.  He was finally going to teach me how to fish.  Until this summer, I have never fully been able to appreciate what he did for me so many years ago.  You see, I took my kids on their first fishing trip just a few weeks ago.  I feel I must give credit where credit is due.  My brother-in-law, an avid angler, called and asked if I wanted to take the kids fishing with him.  Had he not suggested it I probably would have delayed our first fishing trip for, oh I don’t know, another 10 or 15 years.  The thought of spending the day untangling spools of four pound test and avoiding the inevitable hooked finger had until now not been all that appealing to me.  The sheer fact that he had suggested we fish the private pond of an old family friend made the idea at least palatable.  It was a small pond, stocked, and seldom fished.  It would be like shooting monkeys in a barrel.

How does the old saying go?  Give a child a fish and feed him for a day.  Teach a child to fish and you had better have the patience of Job and a good set of hemostats because someone’s getting hooked.  We prepared for our fishing trip with a little trip of our own to the local sporting goods store.  If a kids gonna fish they are gonna need a rod.  I remember my first fishing rod, a Zebco 33.  Man, that thing was durable.  You could completely submerge the rod and reel, I had problems with the concept of casting, and it would still function perfectly.  I had no idea how the fishing industry had changed.  The manufacturers are still the same, Zebco, Shakespeare and the likes but the rod/reel combos are definitely not.  For my wee anglers we settled on Barbie, Bugs Bunny and Sponge Bob Square Pants.  Thank God hooks, sinkers and bobbers are essentially the same.

The kids’ new rods even came with casting plugs so I felt a bit of practice was in order.  We lined up in the drive and the lessons began.  Quick studies, my kids for in what seemed only a matter of minutes they had the general concept down.  They were casting as well as you could expect any three, five and six year old kid with 10 minutes of intense instruction.  Then came the phone call.  I only had to leave their sides for as long as it takes a person to say, “I’m sorry, you must have the wrong number.”  When I got back my three year old was trying to explain to me how her reel doesn’t work right, fishing lined tangled so tightly around her legs she could barely walk the pole dragging some twenty feet behind her.  In fact, fishing line was everywhere.  It was in the trees, wrapped around the birdbath, the dog was even snared.  It looked like one of those spiderweb scenes from a Halloween display.  No way this much chaos ensued in the time it took me to sneeze.  It was going to be a long day at the pond.

First stop on the way to the pond was the bait store.  It took Zoë all of thirty seconds to find the minnow well.  “Dad, it’s full of fish.  We don’t need to go fishing, we can just buy them.”  It took quite a bit of explaining that we were actually going after bigger game.  We settled on a nice selection of wax worms and on the road we set out, again.  After only three more stops, coffee and juice, “I’m hungry”, and gas (Why I couldn’t get all of those in one stop is still beyond me.  Anyone who has ever traveled with kids can surely relate.) we arrived at the pond.  I had never fished the pond but had heard all of the stories.  It was the perfect spot for a kid to learn how to fish and fall in love with the sport.

In a matter of minutes lines were set and bobbers began plunging beneath the surface of the water. I can still remember the first fish I ever caught.  I  remember the exhilaration at seeing that bobber disappear beneath the water, the sheer excitement of feeling the tugging on the end of the line and watching that old cane pole bend.  The ultimate feeling of having conquered the world when that tiny fish came flopping out of the water and continued it’s dance at my feet.  I had thought those feelings were lost forever, buried deep in the recesses of my mind beneath all of the muck that accompanies maturity.  I’m happy to report they are still there, alive as they ever were renewed in the squeals of jubilation from my children as they proclaimed, “I got one!”

The pond certainly lived up to it’s billing.  My kids all caught fish, many fish.  By the day’s end my boy, Zane had even started to bait his own hook.  Can I unequivocally say that I have made little anglers of them all?  Probably not.  At least not yet.  My hope, though is that I have planted enough seeds there to spark an interest that will continue to grow.  I know at least that they had an absolute blast and to my great relief, the only thing that got hooked that day were fish.

Spoiler??  Hardly.  I haven’t read the first Harry Potter book and to my recollection, I’ve only seen two of the movies, maybe three.  No, what I’m talking about here is the resurgence of Potter Mania in Casa de Zoë’s Dad.  You see, my wife is a huge fan of the Potter boy.  She’s read em’ all and seen em’ all.  I do recall one year before Zoë was born wading through the masses of freckle faced children wearing capes and wizard hats and those black round rimmed glasses in Barnes and Noble at midnight just to get her copy hot off the presses as it were.  I happened to be out of town during the release party this year and my wife seized the opportunity to once again haunt the B&N Harry Potter release party only this time she had a more enthusiastic entourage.  All five of our Z’s took part in the evening’s festivities and I can safely say were fans of Ms. Rowlings’ work long before night’s end.  So much so that we found ourselves making a last minute theme change to my boy Z’s fifth birthday party celebration. 

We asked Z how he wanted to celebrate his birthday and he, without hesitation, said a pool party.  I was thrilled because it meant we could have the party at the country club (remind me sometime to tell you about the transformation from country bumpkins to country clubbers) and I wouldn’t have to clean the house or prepare the food.  It was a fantastic party on a perfect night, small and intimate the way I like it.  Just a few family members and a couple of Z’s friends.  Of course, our theme had been changed to Harry and there were plenty of wands, glasses and ear wax flavored jelly beans to go around.  It could not have been more special.  And I believe my wife has initiated what I hope to be a very longstanding tradition in the giving of gifts to our kids.