Sunday, November 13, 2005

Today has been a pretty low-key day, which is a nice change for a Sunday. Right now I've got blogging and a beer. Not bad! My weekends usually tend to get filled up with errands, chores, social engagements, and those damn runs.

Yesterday, for example, I went a on good 90 minute run with my running club. I spent most of those minutes jogging with the coach and another guy. So, there we were, 3 men from in their late 30's, living in cultured and cosmopolitan San Francisco, running together for over an hour. What did we discuss? Schwarzenegger's latest political follies? Theater? Using exercise as part of a holistic life?

Nope. Vaginas. We pretty much just discussed vaginas. I'm trying really hard to develop my "jock" persona (to go with the "itch"), so it's important to get down some good vagina patter. I don't want to give away any jock secrets, but I can tell you that rule #1 is to never use the word "vagina".

Afterwards I went to go watch my daughter's soccer team. The games are pretty low-key and often hilarious. I have, however, noticed a bit of improvement in Daisy's game.

In general, she shies away from the ball. If no one else is near it, she'll give it a tentative kick, but there's no follow-through. The concept of dribbling down the field is only mastered by a few kids on the field.

Last week, one kid accidentally booted the ball straight into some girl's face. She stopped, stunned for a second, and then began to bawl. Action on the field ceased and the referee ran over to see if she was ok (she was). My daughter, however, was oblivious to this development and merely saw the ball lying on the grass by itself. She ran over and began DRIBBLING THE BALL DOWNFIELD. She dribbled all the way near to the opposing goal and gave the ball a good boot right at the goalie. No goal was scored, but Daisy was ecstatic and inspired by her trip downfield. All the parents on the sidelines were howling with laughter at the timing of Daisy's boldness.

Since that moment, in the last week, she has found other opportunities to try and dribble down field. No goals yet, but it's been fun to watch her develop a wee bit of skill. Maybe, one day, a goalie will get injured and Daisy will get her chance to score.

The final festivity of the day was taking Daisy to a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Have you ever tried to order a pizza for someone who is allergic to cheese at a place with "cheese" in the title? It ain't easy. Our first attempt came with EXTRA cheese on it The second attempt was technically more successful, but you can't really declare "success" when the result is a miserable platter of dough, dotted with bland tomato sauce and meager toppings. Even Daisy could recognize it as a crappy meal. Nothing that an hour of mindless skeeball couldn't fix, mind you.

Meanwhile I made smalltalk with the birthday girl's parents. This is always awkard for me because I don't want to offend my daughter's friend's parents, yet many people find me quite offensive. So, I'm tasked with the challenging goal of making interesting smalltalk while simultaneously castrating all interesting parts of my personality. I mostly just asked a lot of questions.

Well, my beer is about empty. Outty.

2 comments:

tinyhands said...

The 'vagina patter' doesn't work at Chuck E Cheese?

Mike said...

You know, I didn't bust out the vagina chit-chat. Some normally silent void tells me that was wise.