Tom Naughton

Well, I knew it had to happen eventually. Sara, my seven-year-old, is beginning to figure out that her daddy was born with little (if any) natural athletic ability.

Without really intending to, I’d managed to keep my ineptitude at sports hidden from her by virtue of being several times her size. Whenever I kicked a ball 20 yards, it probably looked like a half-mile to her. Whenever I launched a wiffle golf-ball over the garage with a nine-iron, I probably looked like Tiger Woods to her young, innocent, admiring eyes.

It began to dawn on me just how badly she’d been misled when we were watching a Titans game early in the season:

“Daddy, you really like professional football, don’t you?”

“Yes, sweetie, I do. I’m glad you like watching with me.”

“Well … if you like it so much, why don’t you play professional football?”

Apparently she assumed it was just a vocational choice.  Let’s see … computer programmer, or linebacker for the Bears? I dunno, I’m not sure I want to put up with the millions of dollars and the adoring fans.

I was flattered, but figured it would be better in the long run if I began to disabuse her of the notion that Daddy is the strongest man in the world.

“Sara, these are professional athletes. They train their whole lives to be this good. And they’re way bigger and way faster than I am.”

“Oh. So did you play college football?”

“No. College football players are pretty big and pretty fast too.”

“Oh. Did you play high school football?”

“Uh … no.”

After a thoughtful glance towards the TV, she attempted to offer me a graceful exit.

“Is it because you don’t have dark skin?”

“What?”

“The football players all have dark skin.”

“That’s just the defense. I mean, no, they don’t all have dark skin.”

“Well, most of them do.”

Time to fess up.

“Sara, I went to a Catholic high school with a very good football team, and only a couple of the players had dark skin. I didn’t play football because I wasn’t strong enough or fast enough.”

“Because you ate a lot of sugar when you were a kid and you weren’t healthy?”

“I’m sure that was part of it, yes.”

So she accepted that her daddy wasn’t a good athlete. But at the time, I don’t think she fully gasped that her daddy is, in fact, a bad athlete. For that to sink in, Santa Claus had to give her an evil, despicable, klutz-exposing contraption known as “a Wii.”

The hugeness of my physique relative to Sara’s provides no advantage whatsoever in Wii games, because everything — golf, baseball, sword-fighting, bowling, tennis, archery and Frisbee — is played with a small electronic paddle. Strength is meaningless, and hand-eye coordination is everything. Consequently, she regularly beats me in golf, baseball, sword-fighting, bowling, tennis, archery and Frisbee. For reasons I can’t quite figure out, I still win in ping-pong and basketball.

Pretty much every day now, she lays down the challenge.

“Daddy, can we play Wii?”

“Uh … okay.”

“What do you want to play?”

“How about ping-pong?”

“Naw.”

“Basketball?”

“Maybe when I get a little better. Let’s play baseball.”

In my defense, I think our Wii paddles may be equipped with a klutz-detector installed by some aging jock at the Wii factory who misses his carefree, youthful days of picking on weaklings. I say this because during several of our baseball games, Sara hit a fly ball to the outfield and my Wii character — I’m not kidding — dropped the ball.

If you’re not familiar with Wii baseball, all you do when the other player is batting is throw a pitch. There’s no fielding. Your Wii characters play defense automatically. And mine automatically drop fly balls now and then … just to make sure I never forget why I hated recess and gym class.

My lack of hand-eye coordination might not be so embarrassing if not for the fact that Sara is turning out to be a natural jock. Even though she quite obviously inherited my frame — all the way down to the almost-freakishly-long thumbs — Mother Nature somehow managed to infuse her copy of the frame with a large dose of jock-DNA from her mother’s side. (My father-in-law was an all-conference halfback in his youth and is still built like one at age 67.)

The signs were there from birth. When Sara first popped out, she held her head up and looked around as if demanding to know who turned on the lights. By the time she was six months old, if she decided she’d just as soon wear that poopy diaper for awhile longer thank-you very much, it was a battle to hold her still and change her. More than once, my wife and I looked at each other and said, “Man … how can something so little be so strong?”

Now that she’s seven, she’s still strong, and she’s turning out to be athletic as well. I already suspected she was blessed with good hand-eye coordination, because when we toss a football around in the back yard, she throws spirals into my chest. I just didn’t suspect her hand-eye coordination would exceed mine quite so vastly, quite so soon.

Last night, we played Wii baseball. When I was batting, Wii responsed with a more or less continuous string of helpful on-screen tips:

You swung too early!
You swung too early!
You swung too late!
You swung too early!
You swung too late!
You swung too late!
You swung too early!
You swung too late!
You seriously suck at this!
You swung too early!
You swung too early!

Sara’s on-screen messages were more along the lines of:

Double!
Single!
Double!
Double!
Home Run!

This was in spite of the fact that I’d discovered if you press the “A” button before pitching, you toss a fairly wicked screwball.

When she hit a grand slam and pulled ahead by something like 20 runs, Wii produced a message I didn’t know was even in the programming:

Mercy Rule. Game Over.

Well, okay, she’s having fun and all that. I mean, she loves me, she admires me … it’s not as if she’ll stop respecting me just because You swung too early! and You swung too late! feel like exactly the same swing to me. Right?

It snowed nearly five millimeters in Middle Tennessee last night, so the schools were closed today. After I woke up and drank some coffee, Sara asked if I’d play Wii with her. I said sure, but I need to check my email first. A few minutes later, she poked her head in my office.

“Let’s play Wii now, Daddy!”

“One more minute, Sara.”

“Awww!”

“Just one more minute.”

She left for the kitchen. A moment later, she yelled for me.

“It’s been another minute already! Come on, old man, I’m going to kick your butt!”

I guess that pretty much answers my question.

As I described a couple of days ago on the Fat Head blog, I recently started experimenting with intermittent fasting and found it surprisingly painless. The purpose of fasting in this case is to induce hormonal changes that lead to weight loss and better health.

My first attempt at fasting took place when I was 10 years old, and weight loss had nothing to do with it — the last thing I needed at that age was to become any skinnier. However, like most adolescent boys, I felt a deep need to go on a vision quest so I could meet my animal protector and be shown my purpose in life.

I knew all about vision quests because I’d become utterly fascinated with American Indians in third grade. By fourth grade, I’d ploughed through every book on Indians that could be borrowed from the Bettendorf public library. While some boys decorated their bedrooms with posters of quarterbacks and home-run sluggers, mine featured posters of famous Indians: Tecumseh, Geronimo, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and a few others. I was, as far as I knew, the only kid in town who watched westerns and secretly hoped John Wayne would take an arrow.

Of all my Indian heroes, I liked Crazy Horse the best. He was a brilliant strategist in battle and almost unbelievably brave, riding straight into his enemies without hesitation. But there was a good reason for the bravery: his vision. During a vision quest, a white owl showed Crazy Horse how to paint his face for battle and promised he wouldn’t be killed. Most importantly, Crazy Horse learned during his vision that he was destined to lead his people.

(Just for the record, if a politician in modern times shared a similar story, I’d vote for somebody else, no matter what the owl predicted.)

I’m blessed with a pretty good memory, but 42 years after the fact, I have no idea what personal destiny I expected to be revealed in my vision. If I’d met, say, a golden hawk, and the golden hawk happened to be honest, the message he delivered would’ve been similar to a fortune I once pulled from humorous fortune-cookie:

Your life will be far more ordinary than you ever thought possible.

Perhaps I was merely hoping for some useful tips in my vision, such as: If you wear red boxer shorts every day, you’ll no longer strike out in kickball. Whatever I was expecting, during the summer we lived in Carbondale, Illinois, I grew increasingly determined to have my vision.

Unfortunately, the lifestyle of a white, suburban 10-year-old includes several barriers to a vision quest.  The two biggest are called “parents.”  Mine weren’t very open-minded about me wandering off into the wilderness for a few weeks. They reminded me that when I actually wandered in the woods for a few hours during summer day-camp, I came home with a tick lodged in my scalp and spent the next week worrying that I’d contracted Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. They also couldn’t appreciate the advantages of building a sweat lodge in the back yard — although my mom convinced me that a really hot bath would provide similar purification.

Luckily, after I made a strong case for the necessity of a vision quest, they agreed I could try fasting — a crucial component for achieving a trance state. In retrospect, they probably agreed only because they figured I’d never go through with it. But I did.

At several points throughout the Day of the Vision Quest, my mom attempted to undermine my discipline by preparing some of her most awesome meals: cinnamon toast with hot milk poured on top, Campbell’s tomato soup with American cheese and saltine crackers mixed in, and hamburgers prepped with Lipton Onion Soup mix. Despite the temptation and the recurring light-headedness, I remained strong and went to bed without eating a morsel all day. I was ready for my vision.

When the vision came, there were no white owls or golden hawks. There were no animal protectors at all. My vision was of three men wearing black body-suits and black masks, sneaking into our house through my bedroom window. They were, as any kid could tell you, “Bad Guys.” One of them tiptoed close to my bed and spoke to me. I don’t remember what he said, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t explaining my purpose in life.

I snapped awake, shaking. I knew it was only a nightmare. I knew there were no Bad Guys climbing through my bedroom window. However, the nightmare alerted me to a danger I’d previously overlooked: In this house, unlike in our house in Iowa, my bedroom was on the ground floor … which meant Bad Guys could, in fact, climb through my bedroom window any time the thought occurred to them.

Psychologists tell us the only inborn fears are of heights and loud noises. The psychologists are full of it. Fear of Bedroom Invasion by Bad Guys may not afflict babies, but it develops during childhood as predictably and as naturally as teeth. Parents certainly don’t cause it. We’ve never hinted to our daughters that Bad Guys might show up in the middle of the night. They don’t read books or watch TV shows featuring Bad Guys. And yet soon after we moved to Tennessee, I had the following conversation with my daughter Alana, who was four at the time:

“Do you and Sara like your new bedroom, Alana?”

“Yeah! I really like my tent-bed.”

(Her “tent-bed” is a sleeping nook built into the wall. )

“I really like your tent-bed, too. It’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah, and if a Bad Guy comes into the room, he’ll probably kill Sara first because she’s closer to the door, and then I’ll get away.”

This is from the daughter people refer to as “the sweet one.”

When I was her age, my older brother Jerry performed similar calculations, but his intentions were a bit more heroic. He figured since I slept in the bottom bunk, the Bad Guy would bend down and grab me first. So he kept a butter knife under his pillow and assured me he would plunge it into the Bad Guy’s back.

I found this battle plan comforting. I imagined the Bad Guy staggering wide-eyed around our bedroom, trying desperately to reach over his shoulder and extract the weapon, then finally crumpling to the floor, cursing himself with his last breath for being taken out by a six-year-old wielding a butter knife … or perhaps mumbling, “I @#$%ing hate margarine!”

That image was no comfort now, however, because my brother and his butter knife were sleeping in another room, and there was no top bunk from which to launch a successful ambush.  After fasting all day, I was obviously too weak to take on one Bad Guy, never mind three. And for all I knew, the nightmare was a premonition. The only smart move was to get myself as close as possible to the one person I knew who could kill three Bad Guys: my dad.

When the fear subsided to the point that I was no longer catatonic, I slid out of bed and tiptoed to my parents’ room. Unlike my daughters, I never developed the stealth required to crawl into an adult’s bed without being detected, so my mom woke up immediately.

“What are you doing?”

“I had a nightmare. There were these three Bad Guys–”

“Okay. Shhh. Go to sleep. Tell me about it tomorrow.”

When tomorrow finally came, I ate a hearty breakfast. The vision would have to wait.

Snow in Chicago on Christmas Day

Almost Ready to Go

Before we even left Tennessee, we had to perform some Santa Claus tricks. Alana, my five-year-old, began asking for an electric car months ago, and we decided we were okay with getting ripped off and bought it for her. No, it’s not a Smart Car … but the pink Barbie Camaro we ordered from Wal-Mart is approximately the same size, only with more leg room.

We managed to keep the big box hidden in the garage — one of the many advantages of having a garage full of large, useless items — and informed Alana that even though we’d be in Chicago on Christmas morning, we’d asked Santa Clause to leave the car under the tree at our house. (Fortunately, Santa doesn’t charge extra for multiple deliveries.)

We’d also picked up a Wii for Sara, my seven-year-old. She didn’t ask Santa for a Wii, but after playing with one at a friend’s house some weeks ago, she came home and declared it “totally cool.” We decided to leave that under our own tree as well, if only to maintain a state of sibling equilibrium when we returned.

So after loading up the car and getting the girls strapped in, I had to make an excuse to go back inside and move the car from the garage to the living room. I was worried the girls might become suspicious. They’re used to seeing their mommy run back inside. In fact, my wife likes to play a travel game called Is The Coffee Pot Off?!  The object of the game is see how far from home she can get to me to drive before turning around so she can run in and check the coffee pot. But that’s her role in the game.  Once I leave the house to take a trip, I don’t go back inside unless I see flames in my rearview mirror.

I announced that I may have forgotten a suitcase and went inside. The girls never wondered why it took Daddy 10 minutes to determine if a packed suitcase was sitting inside the front door. During those 10 minutes, Daddy — who has a bad shoulder that will probably require surgical repair soon — was trying to lug a big box up a short flight of stairs while mostly using one arm to do it. Daddy was also saying lots of words that weren’t very Christmas-like.

Off We Go

With Santa’s extra deliveries in place near the tree, we took off for Springfield, Illinois. On most car trips, my daughters counter-synchronize their bladders to make sure I’ll be exiting the highway in search of a bathroom at least every 45 minutes. For some reason, they forgot this time. I was impressed with myself for making good time until I saw a sign announcing the distance to Louisville, Kentucky. I experienced a strange mental discomfort … something didn’t feel quite right. Then it hit me: we pass through Louisville on the way to Chicago, not Springfield. I’d been driving on auto-pilot. So we got to see far more of the Kentucky countryside than I’d planned as we spent two hours working our way west on two-lane highways.

Springfield

It was while we were staying at my mom’s house in Springfield that I began to suspect my daughters might be on their way to having a perfect Christmas. (It seems to me we get perhaps one or two perfect Christmases during childhood — I remember two.)  They built a snowman in my mom’s front yard. They charmed my mom with compliments such as “Grandma, I just love the floppy skin on your neck!” They loved the presents they opened after our big family dinner on December 23rd. They were delighted to see their cousins (my brother’s three sons), who are all old enough to be their uncles but also young enough to get down on the floor for piggy-back rides and wrestling matches.

Sara was also delighted to discover that my sister owns a Wii, which is attached to my mom’s big-screen TV. I was somewhat less than delighted (late at night, when no one was watching) to discover that my ineptitude at real sports is exceeded only by my ineptitude at Wii sports. Wii not only kicks my butt at tennis (on the beginner setting), it then insists on replaying each of my bad shots in slow motion. All that’s missing is an audio track recorded by one of the playground bullies from my childhood, saying, “You call that a backhand, weenie-boy? Man, you really suck!” But that would be cruel, so Wii settles for finishing each round by showing my Wii character bowing its head in shame as YOU LOSE appears on screen.

After trouncing my sister at tennis, golf and bowling, Sara again declared Wii “totally cool” and told me, “I wish I would’ve asked Santa Claus for one of these!” I reminded her that Santa wouldn’t be leaving the North Pole for another day and promised I’d try to get a message to him. She said to tell Santa it was okay if he left a Wii at our house, along with Alana’s electric car.

Perfect.

Off We Go Again

Word of advice to people still out there looking for love: forget about looks, personality, and other inconsequential traits. Marry someone whose parents live within driving distance of yours. That way you don’t risk winding up in divorce court after one too many debates about which family to visit each Christmas.

Springfield to Chicago is less than four hours in the car — unless it’s snowing, which it was when we left for Chicago on the morning of Christmas Eve. Eventually the snow was blowing more or less sideways, so the wipers on our van stepped up and responded by efficiently clearing the splatters from the entire windshield, except for a large area at eye level on the driver’s side. I alternated between making myself artificially tall and artificially short to see where the heck we were going.

After spending winters in both Illinois and Tennessee, I realize there’s a difference in how southern bad drivers and northern bad drivers respond to snowy roads. The southern bad drivers assume any amount of snow makes driving impossible and stay home, living off the canned goods they ran out to buy when they first heard snow was in the forecast. The northern bad drivers assume traction on a snowy road is exactly the same as traction on a clear road and continue zipping along at 75 miles per hour. Both sets of bad drivers end up ceding the roads to us cautious-but-willing drivers … but the southerners are sitting at home, while the northerners are sitting in their cars, hoping their cell phones can find a signal down there in the ditch. In a 100-mile stretch on Interstate 55, I saw nearly a dozen vehicles that made unplanned exits.

Chicago

My girls and their six-year-old cousin Marzhan all know that Santa won’t slide down the chimney into a house where any kids are still awake. We emphasized the urgency of the situation by browsing to NORAD’s Santa Tracker on a computer and showing them that Santa was already in South America and could turn north at any minute. They understood. They wanted to go to sleep. They just couldn’t.

Every 90 seconds or so, one of them would appear at the top of the stairs and announce, “I can’t sleep!” They said this as if we were refusing to hand over the magic sleeping potion and were perhaps conspiring to deprive them of gifts from Santa. I finally informed them that if they crawled in bed and didn’t make a sound, Santa would probably be fooled into thinking they were sleeping and leave them their presents anyway. Once they were persuaded to stop jumping out of bed to tell us they couldn’t sleep, they fell asleep.

I’m a natural night-owl and didn’t bother crawling into bed until 2:00 AM. My girls bounced on the bed roughly 47 minutes later and announced that the sun was coming up and therefore it was clearly time to go downstairs. It’s only after becoming a parent myself that I finally understand why my dad always looked so exhausted on Christmas. (Given my dad’s famous lack of ability to use simple tools, I suspect he was often up until nearly daybreak, cussing about labels that read: SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.)

Once again, the girls were delighted with their gifts — then delighted all over again when they found notes from Santa in their stockings, informing them that the electric car and the Wii would be waiting for them at home.

They ate several pounds of treats constructed entirely from high fructose corn syrup and/or white flour, then burned off the excess fuel by engaging in an all-day snowball fight with a gang of cousins. The snow was deep enough to look like Christmas, but not enough to shut down the city.

Perfect.

And Back Again …

After a few more days of visits with aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, and relatives I can’t quite identify, we drove home. Sara spent much of the trip listening to her new MP3 player. We figured it must’ve come with a few songs pre-loaded, which it did, but it turned out she was mostly listening a Suze Orman audiobook titled Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny. I suspect she’ll be asking for a bigger allowance soon, and perhaps a 401k.

The closer we got to home, the more often Alana reminded us that she was soon to be the owner of an electric car, courtesy of Santa Claus. She didn’t see any good reason she shouldn’t take it for a test drive in the dark after we got home. Fortunately, it was raining when we pulled into the driveway, so she decided the test drive could wait. My wife hurried inside to turn the big box so the Wal-Mart delivery sticker wouldn’t be facing forward (something Daddy forgot to check while lugging the box upstairs and muttering bad words).

The girls bounded inside after her. As my wife and I carried in the luggage and the gifts, the girls were practically bouncing around the living room.

“Look! That’s my caaaaaaar!”

“Santa got me the Wii! Look, Alana, I got a Wii!”

“This is the best Christmas present EVER!”

“This is the best Christmas present ever, too!”

Yes, they’re just toys. Yes, Christmas is too commercial, Christmas shopping can be a hassle, and Christmas travel can be tiring. But kids don’t know that, and they shouldn’t. For them, Christmas can still be perfect. And when it’s perfect for them, it’s pretty darned good for us too.