so long, and thanks for all the bad hops


listen, there's no way we would have or could have ever predicted we would be playing this long. in the beginning, we weren't doing it to establish any sort of legacy or foundation for a recreation ministry. it just sort of worked out that both very naturally happened.

eleven years ago, chris perry and i were shooting the breeze as was custom for us during the early years of my ministry experience. i leaned on his time served as a sounding board in a lot of ways, throwing ideas off and around him to see if they made sense outside of my head. most of the time they didn't, but he was gentle with his guidance and direction, and he was invaluable as an asset and a resource and an encourager when it came to pointing me in a direction and saying, "just go for it", "what's the worst that can happen?", or "there's a really good chance the youth are going to like you even if the idea is stupid". and so it went. day after day. week after week. we'd spend a ton of time together during our respective weeks. i'd spend a little less time (but no less important) with john rutland and we planned for the future of huffman united methodist church.

but softball didn't have much to do with any of that. softball, as an idea, was really nothing more than an excuse to hang out with each other and some of our friends. i don't know that we really thought we'd be any good, but we knew for certain that we were going to have a good time. the year before, we had started playing pick-up basketball and had developed enough relationships through that group and men/youth already in and around the church that we could field a team.

the founding fathers of humc softball were:

kevin o'kelley
chris perry
chris hicks ("chicks", "salty", the giver of most of our nicknames)
brian kiker ("kiker", "kike")
mike gibbs ("gibby")
nate beverly
brad henson ("chipper", "chip", "sock arm")
michael putman ("put")
mark mccollister ("marky", "marcus",)
doug foote ("big doug", "belch")
paul sutton  ("paulie", "geez")

over the years, i've instituted an unspoken "founding fathers" policy for the team. if one of the above had to/chooses to leave for a time and want to come back, we make a spot. when mike gibbs went away to become a superhero (then to go work in tampa for a bit), he had a spot waiting for him upon his return back to earth. when mike putman and mark had to left to pursue a higher education, they were welcomed back with open arms after the humc softball sirens sang them back to us. if kiker ever leaves to go coach some other kid's little league baseball team, he doesn't have to fret about his rightful seat being taken out from under him. the founding fathers policy prevents that from happening. it's a somewhat selfish and self-serving policy. i will own that. whatareyougonnado? eleven years later, five of those eleven men still remain active on the team. how ya like them apples??? i can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that no team that existed at new covenant in our first year can make that claim. not that i am proud of it or anything.

so, the founding fathers played softball together eleven years ago. we practiced at huffman ballpark on sunday afternoons, chris hicks and i singing the theme song to "the greatest american hero" to each other in the outfield, brad henson being renamed "chipper" then "chip", doug foote and paul sutton sharing time both at pitcher and first base, gibbs owning shortstop and nate beverly constantly wowing the rest of us with his natural athletic ability, rocket arm and perfect swing, doing it all with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. we practiced because that's what we thought we were supposed to do, that and we didn't want to make assholes of ourselves when we made our unprofessional debut as a team. and, what do you know? we didn't. we didn't win the league that first season, but we were okay from what i remember. a .500 team with enough good moments and good times to know we'd play again in the fall. we got a little better in the fall, so we'd play again the next spring. and so it went for several years. as guys burned out or guys went off to school or pastors got moved to other cities, our cast changed. the more it changed, the more it seemed to stay the same. the proverbial names on the back of the jerseys (t-shirt in the early days) were different, but the feeling always familial and familiar. softball became a once (or twice) a week excuse to feel like kids again, to forget what shitty shit was going on at work or at church or in life in general, to escape back to that feeling when your neighbors would knock on your door when we were ten so we could go out and play. we went out and played alright. we played softball at new covenant fellowship church in pinson. and we've been playing ever since.

i've been thinking for a week now about all the guys that have worn some version of "the green" over the last eleven years. not counting guys that we had to pick up at the field, here are the names i can come up with:

adam mcclendon
jason lynn
jason white ("rookie", "rook")
clint argo ("big nasty", "nasty")
kevin williams
taylor preston ("the wall")
tim bowman
cody berguson
heath argo
donald richards
melvin eatmon
robert williams
philip gibson
ken sransky
kevin allard
bo martin
mike's brother in law, brett
bryan pool
ken tittle
caleb martin
keith carpenter
aaron clark
mark usry
reagan denson
jason mccleney
mike williams
mark alfano
(sarah o'kelley and melanie (sransky) williams also deserve shout-outs for being our unofficial team moms)

38 guys! there's no way i haven't forgotten somebody. and i am going to feel really bad when i remember or am reminded of those names. 38 guys in 11 years. thinking about that number over what has now been 21 completed seasons, it feels like a lot of moving parts. i guess it was. i guess it is. obviously, not every one of those guys played full seasons (only three of the 38 have been ever-present souls, participants in each of the 21 seasons...me, kike, and paul) with the team. maybe circumstances prevented it from happening. maybe we only needed a fill-in for a few weeks. whatever the case was or has been, though, i have fond memories of my experiences with every single one.

i've been tripping down memory lane for a week for one specific reason. last monday night, june 20th, humc men played their last game at new covenant fellowship church. the park and the fields were never the best in birmingham, but they are both now shells of their former selves. i won't trash either too hard in this post. that's not what this is for.

this post is for revisiting some history. this post is for revisioning some of the same. it's for the good times that we had. it's for all the games we won. it's for the two titles that we claimed. it's for every frustrating monday, tuesday or thursday when the line-up cards were harder than usual to fill out. it's for the bad times when we weren't nearly as good as we thought we should be and it's for the worse times when we were just plain bad.

this post is for all the loved ones that came out to see us play. it's for all the weddings that have brought us together in better clothes. it's for all the babies that have been born into our unofficial family. it's for divorce. it's for busted down trucks. it's for cancer. it's for lost friends and found friends. it's for the years before the concession stand and the years after.

we moved to a new address last night. i won't bet on another post like this in ten years. given what's now in our rear-view mirror, i won't bet against it.

i've been alive working on 35 years. 11 of them...ELEVEN (really how many things in your life have you done for 11 years that don't include your job? i don't have another example)...have been framed by one team and one place, one place with three fields and 37 guys i didn't know at the time that i couldn't live without.

softball, as an idea, was really nothing more than an excuse to hang out with our friends.

to that end, it's the best idea i've ever had.  

to be continued...

hannah and caroline and the little kumquat and me
(part five)
((the one where we found out the kumquat was a girl))


i meant it.

every time i said it.

every word.

of this post. every word.

every time someone made the comment "this one's going to be a boy.", "i know you are hoping for a boy.", "girls are terrible. you need a boy." or anything along those lines, it struck me as asinine in the same way i struck myself as asinine when i was emotionally and visibly shaken after caroline showed herself female.

why would it matter? why should it matter?

i have two living, breathing, beautiful examples of the blessings that are girls, that are daughters in my and sarah's life. in some ways, it would make more sense if i was not only not actively rooting for a boy, but i was, in fact, intensely rooting for a girl. after hannah and caroline, we know (as well as you can know anything i guess) how to "do" girls. we know how girls roll. we know how girls cry. we know how girls react to having their feelings hurt. we know how to hold them, how to scold them, and when to physically fold them in half after they've broken something else in the kitchen. as we age, in general, we all get better at any lot in life after we've known it, practiced it, grown comfortable with it, then mastered it. we aren't masters at having daughters, that's for sure, but we sure as hell are seven and a half years closer to it than we are at doing so with a son.

intellectually, it makes sense what i've been telling myself and other people. rooting for one sex over the other is ridiculous, foolish even. root for health. root for a gentle personality. root for them sleeping through the night the day you come home from the hospital. root for gender? absurd.

ultrasound tech: do y'all want to know the sex?

sarah said, "yes, we do." in that voice of hers that means, "uh, duh. of course we do". so the ultrasound tech started looking around. in that moment, my heart began to flutter. i held sarah's hand. and in spite of everything i said in the first few paragraphs of this post, i wanted "it's a boy." to be the announcement. badly.

i don't know why the want came out from wherever it was hiding. it was obviously always there. somewhere. i just didn't want to talk to it. to acknowledge it was there. because i had been told and told myself it was stupid.

then again, i am stupid (we all know this), so, you know, whatareyougonnado?

the story goes as the story went. we announced last week that we are having a girl. as we left the hospital, sarah could tell that i was all shook up, just like i was with caroline. i couldn't hide it. part of me didn't want to. part of me wanted to vomit it all out so i could get my disappointment out of my system, but a bigger part of me wanted to create as little deja vu to "the caroline incident" for sarah as i could. i did well in the hospital, less well in the elevator, worse still in the parking lot and i was outright rude on the phone from the car.

i am nothing if not predictable in times like those.

this time was different, because it felt like the last time. for something. for what?

for me to have a boy?

for us to have a son?

for our family to expand?

to anticipate that day like last thursday when we find out what "it" is?

i don't know. all of those. some of them.

it's painfully obvious that, over the course of my development and maturation, something was wired deep into my soul that made me think i really wanted a son. and dammit, come cancer or high water, that wasn't going to change.

does this personality flaw make my current daughters any less beautiful, engaging, or joyful? of course not. does this mean that i will be disappointed when the kumquat makes her appearance into this world sometime in october? not a chance.

in the end, i think it means or meant that i thought i would have a lot to offer a son on what it was like to be a boy. i thought i would have really felt proud and honored to give my son my brother's middle name. i thought that it would have been rather slick to call my boy by the same name as george clooney's character in from dusk 'til dawn. and you know what? that's pretty much the list. observing men in and around my life living vicariously through their children kind of makes me sick. what makes me more sick is how i know i would've been just like them.

with my girls, i want what's best for them and i'll always want them to reach their potential, but i have no ridiculous delusions of grandeur to apply to their futures because i haven't walked ahead of them along a path that i wish for them to emulate. that's a good thing for them.

my feelings last thursday in that dark, ultrasound room will never diminish the way i feel for them and care for them or will ever defend my daughters. in fact, the same animal, instinctual, reflexive emotions that i always wondered if i would attach to a son probably goes double for my girls. they won't need me forever, but they'll sure as hell have me.

i hope that's good enough.

while sarah and i were marveling at the surreal images of our growing baby, baby, baby girl moving inside of her belly, my emotions got the best of me...again. just another example of how, oftentimes, i am quite poor at managing my own expectations.

several days removed, though, my perspective has long since changed and the only frustration concerning the kumquat is her call sign or lack thereof. we'll figure that one out, too, soon enough. then, of course, we'll have another girl in our home in october.

and our lives will be better for it.

disney
(a post-mortem)
((hannah and caroline and the little kumquat and me))
(((part four)))

let's get this out of the way first.

in my opinion, walt disney world is NOT "the happiest place on earth".

there, i said it.

how could it be, really? due to the reasons i listed in last week's post, as an adult, #wdw could never even aspire to be my happiest place on earth. too many variables, all of them spelled k-i-d-s.

now, don't get me wrong. as i mentioned several times in either updates or picture captions live and in the moment(s) on facebook, i loved my family being at disney world. the rumors of the #wdw machine being well-oiled were fair and accurate. i give mad props to sarah for doing all of our pre-planning, and, because of it, we rarely, if ever, had need for a car, cash, or worries where our next meal was coming from. it was all laid out in front of us. each night, we had a table service meal planned which would frame our day (admittedly, we changed plans on the fly tuesday). each morning, day, and night, we had buses that ran, at the very least, every twenty minutes from right outside our hotel door to whatever destination we were pursuing (only one exception to this rule. wednesday, there was a hiccup on the pick-up to epcot, which put us to the park shortly after it opened. i was furious for an hour, got over it, and it totally did not ruin the day). those included any of the parks and downtown disney. we chose to drive both times we went downtown, but we didn't have to. inside the parks, the presentation, style, and service were out of control awesome. it is a known fact that each employee of #wdw is hired to play a "role". if the employee can not embrace "the role" and the vision that every experience should be and will be disney-rific, then that employee will not be long for disney. we did not get bad service in line or in restaurants even once. we hardly saw a frown. we even were subjected to conversations that we weren't looking to have with disney staff that were just looking to shoot the breeze. well-oiled, to be honest, is an understatement. i wouldn't call it magical, per se, because magical implies that the experience just happens, and sarah and i were well aware of the amount of effort that must be placed on the presentation, style, and service. we didn't take it for granted, not for a second. we constantly were marveling at all the moving parts. no, the experience wasn't magical. it was efficient, devastatingly so, in the best way possible.

i think my conclusion and opinion of the parks, though, when commenting on it not being "the happiest place on earth" boiled down to this. it was almost too intense. too busy. too "we've got to move to the next ride, the next show, the next sit down and eat, the next nap, the next park, the next parade, the next fireworks fantastical, the next ..., the next ..., the next ...." for four. straight. days. we were constantly in motion. we constantly felt late. we constantly felt like we were missing something. we must have been. because, of course, we were. we didn't make the circle of countries in epcot. we just didn't have the energy, so some things got cut. they had to. if we didn't make cuts, the experience would have felt cumbersome, and the last thing a vacation should ever feel like is a burden.

so cuts were made, and we were happy to make them. we loaded up friday and drove home completely exhausted. worn out from the work that #wdw had required of us all. it wasn't work without fulfillment, but it was work, make no mistake.

now, work doesn't mean unhappy, but work means tired means lack of relaxation means lack of reflection until all is said and done. i am incredibly happy with the status of my store and our performance in the whole of 2011, but i am rarely "happy" in the moment, because i am working. working towards a goal that will only be reached and seen in hindsight and very rarely in that or those moments of actual work.

such was disney world. it is work to make your children feel like they've died and gone to heaven even while they are throwing tantrums, calling you stupid, sitting on your shoulders, covering your eyes, and hitting you on the head. it is work to endure the same shortcomings in other people's children without kicking them in the face and then picking a fight with their super-hairy dad just because your mood is so fucking raw and vulnerable in that moment in time. it is work to take six days, six nights, 20 hours in the car, get home and feel like you barely spoke to your wife the whole trip. why? because her ass was working just as hard, if not more so, as i was.

that's not the happiest place on earth. that's ... something else.

could it have been that we were merely #wdw rookies, not seasoned enough to make the most of our time? maybe. but i don't believe that's the most of it. i believe that anytime your children are involved, it's going to be hard to see the forest for the trees, nor do i believe you should have to visit the garden of eden five times to understand its beauty.

we had a magnificent time on our vacation. we have the pictures and the stories and the memories to prove it. we want to go back. we'd do it again right now. we will do it again in a few years when the little kumquat is ready to ride daddy's shoulders around for four days.

all of this recounting does beg the question. what would be my happiest place on earth? it's a good question, one that i don't know if i have an immediate answer for. a braves or bama game would be a good place to start, but, unless someone could promise me the outcome would favor my braves or my bama or my julio, the result might leave me altogether unhappy.

i suppose i'll keep searching, keep forging ahead on my quest for my holy grail, my happiest place on earth.

i am satisfied that i can scratch disney off my list. i've been there and done that now. and i am pleased that we enjoyed it so much that we would repeat last week as soon as possible.  

what's next?

happy index
(part disney)
((part one))


might as well extend the series while everyone is asleep. i've only been gone from birmingham for two full days, but i already feel disconnected from the world. i know what my timeline on twitter and my news feed on facebook tells me. that's about it. it's kind of nice. that being said, i really don't have a good subject to riff on, so i'll riff on what i've known for a day and a half... walt disney world.

the ugly:

there are kids everywhere. obviously, this goes without saying, but i am not sure i and sarah would be able to enjoy ourselves on a trip here, just the two of us. i bet she would/will disagree with me on that, and maybe she'd be right. maybe looking at all of the kids would be a wonderful reminder that ours weren't with us for a short time. in many moments while standing in line so far, i have been fearful that being surrounded by children would only serve to remind me that i have children. period. kids are crying. kids are screaming. kids are cussing out their parents. and that's just MY kids. seriously, though, this place does bring clearly into focus that all parents share all the same problems all at the same time. kids get tired in general. here at the happiest place on earth, all of their senses are in hyper-aware mode all of the time. it's like a cell phone constantly trying to pull a 3g signal. the battery dies fast. the kids hannah's age are in perpetual anticipation mode, wondering what we are going to do next, ride next, eat next or what character we are going to see next. caroline, on the other hand, is anticipating also, but her anticipation is wrought from fear. fear of what we are going to do next, ride next, eat next or what character she'll be forced to interact with next. because of her age, we can't ease her worry in the same way we can explain things to hannah. hannah hears us and can process what we are trying to say. caroline can hear and understand some of what we are saying, but, really, she is just mentally paralyzed at the thought of having to sit through "it's tough to be a bug" again. for her, one bad experience forecasts the rest of the experiences as bad until proven otherwise. hannah can be traumatized by the "rock 'n roller coaster", cry it out and then start to look forward to something less upside down.

what we see and can read on our children's faces is painted on the faces of every single stinking kid in the parks. either they just had a really good time at "toy story mania" or their big brother totally fucking lied to them about "tower of terror" not being scary and they want to go. home. now. somewhere away from here. or get me a $5 ice cream bar, mom. whatever. i'm about to lose it. too late. they lost it.

kids, man. such emotional little basketcases. every parent has been exactly like us the last couple months. telling stories of how this will be the BEST. WEEK. EVER...whether the kids like it or not. for us parents, we are living vicariously through our children. if they love the attraction, we love the attraction. if they hate it, we hate our spouse that recommended it. i am serious. sarah and i have stared a couple holes through each other already because something didn't go exactly the way we had it going in our heads. it is ridiculous. death stares are not what BEST. WEEK. EVER.'s are supposed to be about.

and really...they aren't. but our emotional barometers are the aforementioned stinking kids, and hannah has cut me in half with her glare a couple times in a day and half.

"daddy...what in the holy fuck were you thinking that i would enjoy that death trap of a roller coaster. i am fucking seven, daddy. a little girl, goddammit. i like iCarly. i don't know what an aerosmith is, and i don't really give a shit to find out why they got a roller coaster and the jonas brothers haven't yet. take me on that again, daddy. do it. we are sleeping right next to each other. i will bash your face while you dream."

at least, that's how i interpreted her tears as i carried her off the ride.

kids, man. they are everywhere.

the bad:

n/a

the good:

n/a

the great:

everything that i wrote above in "the ugly"? forget i said it. i didn't mean it. not a word.

do you know how fucking happy hannah is in walt disney world??? i mean, for her, this is heaven. this is what it is all about. without lifting a finger, this vacation magically happened for her and caroline. reservations for dinners with princesses, rides on buses, attractions with rhinos, musicals inspired by her favorite disney movies, all of the ingenious, beautiful, incredibly intimidating machine that is disney was created just for her, for her to enjoy and reap the benefits of. for caroline that is riding on her sister's coattails, there are moments where she is totally into it, too. she smiles or hugs pocahontas and we, her parents, aren't stressed or bitching at her. the girls come back to the hotel from disney and turn on the tv...to disney. we swim, we ride, we eat. mommy and daddy don't go to work. they don't go to daycare. they wake up from a nap in a few minutes and we are going to do it again. part 2 of day 2, this vacation made just for them.

it's not for us, except that it is for us, in that it's for them, so it's for us.

they are our emotional barometers and we wouldn't want it any other way. all the money we spend. all the time we take off. the exhaustion we can already predict (with over half of our vacation still left waiting for us) for when we get home. it's all worth it if it's worth it to them.

and so far, i think they would tell you it's been worth it. more moments than not have been filled with stars in their eyes because they are seeing things and experiencing things that are unlike anything in huffman, alabama. they may be seeing things and experiencing things that are unlike anything they'll see again in their lives, or, at least, another long time.

as a daddy, i need to keep my fucking cool. the first two and half hours this morning were seamless. the next two were not. we've got seven left in this day and then days 3 and 4 to go to make sure the girls know and feel like it's not work. it's not a burden.

that it's the happiest place on earth. that it's called that for a reason.

time to wake them up from a nap. they are going to be pissed. and tired. and cranky.

maybe hugging mickey will help.