Reflecting on The Play

So, after a few days’ giddy reflection, what lessons might we take from the events at Memorial Stadium last Saturday night?

I mean, beyond the obvious, such as: “It ain’t over ‘til the fat quarterback flings;” or the ancient Chinese proverb, “he who leaves early may beat the traffic but thus share not in the glory;” or, “Jesus Christ, you NEVER let a receiver get behind you on that play.” 

All well and good, but what else?

Well, perhaps we fans might embrace a little humility and perspective. It surely has crossed all our minds more than once that it was only a very flukish ending that saved Husker Nation from yet another Very Bad Week, with rumblings of coaches being fired, a program adrift, past glories so far out of reach they might as well have happened last century.

The Huskers had a 2.7 percent chance of winning in that situation; yet they did. So, yes, they were lucky. Bo was lucky. So what? It says here that Bo Pelini was due some good luck, especially this season, especially after what happened down in Florida last week. It restores one’s faith in God, or at least the football gods, that he was granted some.

So, by THAT much, we avoid doom and gloom.

Look, I’m a typical fan. I really don’t know much about coaching except I’ve almost always been certain somebody else out there could do a better job than the schmuck we had. That goes for Tom Osborne, too; but for three seasons, he was a hapless hack.  

So the two proudest, happiest moments of this season – maybe of the entire Pelini era -- are the two most improbable: Little Jack Hoffman’s scamper for a touchdown in April and Ron Kellogg III's heave and Jordan Westerkamp’s leap for another in November.

It says something about Huskers’ fans that they have taken such joy and pride in Jack’s moment, and it says even more about the coaches that they let it happen. And it says something, too, that so many fans have taken special delight that this latest moment came courtesy of a third-string quarterback who stuck around more than four years, working his tail off though knowing he might never play. The indescribable joy on his face as he ran around the field, and the joy of the players as they piled on top of each other, were a helpful reminder that for all the weight we put on this business, it is about kids playing a game.

Both moments remind us that what we really love about sports has little to do with championships and rankings. 

Maybe there will be another moment or two like those this season. Probably not. Maybe there will be a division title, maybe even a conference title. Probably not. Or maybe there are two, three, four more losses on this schedule.

Maybe, just maybe, it's not the victory but the action; not the goal but the game; in the deed the glory. Hey, that's pretty good; someone oughta carve that in stone somewhere.

Easy to say on a Wednesday night while still basking in the glow of Kellogg's CornFlick. I still reserve the right, of course, as do you, to call for Bo’s head this Saturday afternoon.

But let's not forget this feeling.

There but for the grace of God ...

“How’s your day going?”
 

“Um fine ha, it’s school so it sucks. You?”
 

“Ok, except work sucks. Let’s run away.”

An unremarkable text exchange between my daughter and me Monday morning, except that it came right after I read a news bulletin from the local newspaper that a 17-year-old girl had jumped to her death from a downtown building.

I presume I’m not the only parent who reached out to his or her child in that moment, just for a connection, however tenuous, or even felt, as I admit I did, a moment’s gnawing “my God, could it be” fear. Even after that passed, I ran to the men’s room at work because I felt like I was going to throw up. 

(Parenthood is great, but there’s a darkness to it: It teaches one what Fear really is.)

See, I have a 17-year-old daughter who suffers from depression and anxiety. She’s doing ... well, like she said, “um fine” now, but I am under no illusions, and neither is she, that she is cured or that her struggle is over. She’s managing it well now, but she has thought of suicide before and even attempted it once. 

I am a writer, so I always presumed I would write about this someday, and this just felt like the day. I got my daughter’s permission to do so and let her read it before posting. She did not change a word.

I did not know Trinity McDonald, but I look at her pictures and a video or two posted online and she strikes me as a spectacularly charming and lovely girl, the sort of person that others gather around just to bask in her presence. A video showing her playing ukulele and singing, utterly unselfconsciously, made me laugh and cry simultaneously. How could such a girl be so depressed that she would even think of, let alone carry out, suicide?

As I’ve learned from my wife, who also suffers from depression, this is one of its most insidious aspects: Things are fine, I have a great life, why am I so depressed? That guilt feeds the depression, and vice versa.

Trinity could be my daughter, also a spectacularly charming and lovely girl. My daughter tells long, involved, entertaining stories, often with multiple sidebars, about various adventures at school and with her friends (Her oldest brother, at the end of one of these, once said, “Sarah, maybe you should think about the point of what you’re saying before you say it,” and she looked at him like he was an alien being.)

God forbid you interrupt one of her stories, or you’ll get a glare and she’ll say, “OK, I’m done. You don’t get to hear the rest of the story now.” Sometimes I get impatient in the middle of these tales, but I also marvel at her energy, her verve and her appreciation for life’s absurdities.

My daughter laughs easily, gets most of my jokes, is a keen commentator on my many foibles, makes me watch “Wife Swap” with her so we can make fun of it together and is fiercely loyal to those she loves.

The sarcasm gene runs deep in my daughter, but so does the kindness and empathy. 

And so does the depression. At its darkest, almost three years ago, we weren’t sure she was going to make it and her parents weren’t sure we would either. We gained enormous respect and admiration for the doctors, nurses and staff at our hospital’s adolescent psych unit, where they perform emergency triage on broken souls, where they tolerate no bullshit from patients or parents because they’ve seen and heard it all before.

I am an absolute believer in therapy and carefully monitored medication. 

And I am a believer in random texts every now and then just to connect.

 “How’s your day going? Band?,” I texted to my daughter this morning.

“Oh I have a lot to say,” she answered.

I can’t wait to hear it.

Transgenders, all in the family

The Nebraska Family Council and Family First have merged into the Nebraska Family Alliance. (Slogan: “Just One Group Now But Still All the Paranoia, Bible-thumping and Demagoguery You’ve Come to Expect from Two”). And its first target? Yes, you guessed it, right there on the website, it asks:  “Transgender sports coming to your school?” Visitors are encouraged to write the Nebraska School Activities Association.

Well, sure, clearly it’s important to take aim at young, vulnerable, already outcast people as your organization’s first target because they so threaten the very fabric of family life.

Look, I don’t understand the whole transgender thing, how some people feel trapped inside with the wrong physical parts. Honestly, it all sounds pretty freaky to me, but then I’m a 50something square, white, middle class, straight guy from Nebraska. If I start hating all the things I don’t understand, I’m gonna be awfully busy hating. Hell, I might even have to form my own group with the word “family” in it just to keep up. Instead, I’ve decided to make room in my consciousness for things I don’t understand and to believe we should find ways to accommodate them as long as they don’t threaten me.

(Actually, when I first heard the word “transgender,” I thought it was like a transformer, only people with the power to change genders at the flip of a switch which, honestly, sounds kinda cool.)

Anyway, the kerfuffle over the transgenders among us, wherever the discussion comes up, always seems to come down to bathroom use. Not to get all Freudian, but one might even suspect the Nebraska Family Alliance and its ilk are stuck at the anal stage of psychosexual development, what with their fixation on toilet habits.

See, I really don’t care who uses the men’s room. Men, women, women becoming men, men becoming women, women who used to be men, men who used to be women. Let’s just all have a big pee party, as Jerry Seinfeld once said. 

I do remember when I was a lad, some buddies and I snuck into a women’s restroom just to see if it offered some clues into what the hell girls were all about. The vending machines on the wall frankly hinted at way more than we were prepared at that age to know, and we skedaddled out quickly and never spoke of it again.

To this day, I cannot speak for the behavioral standards for women’s restrooms, but I can for men’s. In the interests of perhaps salving some of the fears, herewith are some urinal rules that all should follow, whatever their original gender, hoped-for gender or new gender:

-- Eyes straight ahead.

-    -- Don’t choose a urinal immediately next to one occupied unless you have to, and if it’s a three-urinal men’s room and all are unoccupied when you enter, choose one of the end ones, lest you leave the next arrival with no choice but to stand next to you.

     -- Do not put foreign objects in a urinal, but if one already is there – a cigarette butt, gum, a bug -- you are duty bound to aim at it.

In any case, I don’t imagine transgender sports are coming to many schools in Nebraska, so perhaps we should keep our powder dry on a statewide war over them. Where the issue does come up, let us deal with it with sensitivity, compassion and understanding.

You know, the sort of qualities you might expect an organization with the word “family” in it to practice.