I am not being the least bit prejudiced when I tell you that I have beautiful grandchildren.....it's just a fact. Seven in all, each as unique as the combination of their parental genes could make them. Three boys and four girls, brown eyed and blue eyed and each one a piece of my heart.
So far each has played some sport.....tennis, vollyball, soccer, baseball, wrestling, basketball, cheerleading and football among the choices. That brings me to my point. One of my grandsons plays football. I hate football.
He is seventeen....a bit of a daredevil. He's over six feet tall, good looking, on the shy side on one hand and definately not on the other. Suited up he looks like any high school or college young man in tight pants and shoulder pads. But he's not just any young man......he is my grandson. And I have yet to go to a football game.
Now....anyone who knows me understands that I have no clue about sports and I have no desire to learn. I was born without the sports gene that makes crowds go wild and team supporters weep. For the most part I think watching sports is a voyuristic passtime and it bores me. I don't care to watch....I don't care to discuss.....and I am annoyed when every segment of Morning Joe ends with "and how bout those (insert team and proper nickname here). Sports and politics are even more annoying than just plain sports.
Having said all that, I want to note that my dislike of sports is not the reason I haven't been to a football game to see my grandson play. Here's the real reason......I'm a coward. I simply cringe when I think of the hundreds of pounds of muscle and equipment hurtling toward him during any given play on the field. I think of tearing muscles and breaking bones and pain....and those are not things I want to associate with my precious grandson.
For my entire on line life I have used the same screen name.....Datdoo. People chuckle and ask me where it came from, and I always tell them this story. When this hulking seventeen year old was a little fellow I loved carrying him around and hearing him ask, as he pointed a chubby pink finger, "Whut dat do, gwamma?" I never tired of hearing it, and he was curious about every leaf that blew,everything he saw. "Whut dat do?".
Somewhere in my head my big, strapping grandson will always be that little fellow in the blue sunsuit wriggling in my arms as we explored the backyard.
Now he is on the brink of manhood. Soon he will be finishing high school and then off to college....perhaps to play even more football. He is still curious, still trying to figure out how the world fits together. The years have passed and he has grown up. I guess it's time for me to do the same thing, and get into the bleechers to root for this young man who has worked so hard to be on that field with his team mates. I have to overcome my fear of seeing him get hurt, and come to some kind of understanding of the sport of football.
Perhaps I can get him to sit with me through a televised football game before I do and explain it to me......I'll just ask him "What does that do, kiddo??"...............Life is good.
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