The day-long swim meet from Hell

(638 words)

It was an indicator of either my desperation or my depravity, but after five hours of confinement I began to feel a kinship with people who become refugees because of acts of war or acts of God.

I’d lost all perspective.

I’d equated my situation with those who’d lost their homes, their humanity and their hopes in cruel circumstances beyond their control.

But, hey, that’s what five consecutive hours of the Chestnut Ridge Winter Swim Championships will do to a rational dad.

Understand, at five hours we weren’t even half done. Oh, no.

We’d loaded up the car at 6:30 a.m. Saturday for the 40-minute drive to Penn-Trafford High School in Harrison City. I’d miss out on a day’s worth of televised college basketball, agreeable meals, reading in my recliner — all the hallmarks of refined civilization.

To top it all off, our day began with low-grade marital discord when Val accused me of being negative.

The nerve. 

Perceptive nerve, true. But still.

We arrived at sunrise to find every parking spot taken. I don’t know how many parents/coaches/supporters/staff were invited, but not one of them had the sense to decline.

I found a distant spot in a muddy field and said a fast prayer the Saturn wouldn’t sink up to the axles.

We were herded into one of two massive gyms and told to carve out floor space.

Kids, ages 8 to 14, were everywhere. They were blaring their popular music, throwing toys and screaming for attention.

Now, I love kids.

My kids. 

After two hours, I tried to recall the last time I was marooned in a situation so rife with unruly tumult. I had to go clear back to 1981 in Buffalo.

I didn’t go there to see kids swim.

I went there to see the Rolling Stones!

This was the same kind of atmosphere, but with better toilets and less weed.

Really, I should have brought a keg and tried selling beers on the sly.

Had I been given to an amoral bent, it would have been a swell time to summon a local hooker for some commercial  recreation in the backseat in the ol’ high school parking lot.

It’s practically patriotic.

But either scenario would have likely led to me being caught and exposed as a bad father.

And the pressure to appear “good” in these situations is overwhelming. Why else wasn’t there a revolt after say, Hour 7?

I was told organizers used to break this mammoth fundraiser into a morning and an afternoon session. The problem was the morning parents would leave before lunch and the afternoon parents would lunch prior to arrival.

The coffers weren’t filled to satisfactory levels.

And that’s what it’s all about.

Really, an event of this grandiosity should never be held at a local high school.

It should be held in Rio.

If you’re going to have pretensions of Olympian impact, you should hold your event at Olympian venues.

Seating was at such a premium I missed one of Lucy’s relay races because the already cramped viewing area was too packed to admit even one more parent.

If you think missing the event left me saddened, you’re mistaken. If anything, seeing the events was even worse than being incarcerated in the gyms.

I’ll never understand parents who feel the need to scream, “Go, Peyton! Go!” at a kid whose ears are underwater. Steeler playoff games are less raucous.

Oh, and the event I missed was just one of four — four — from the entire day.

All told, our daughter was in the water a grand total of 7 minutes and 43 seconds of an event that lasted 12 interminable hours.

It was utter madness.

On a day when the actual participants are barely in the water, it’s the parents who put up with this crap who are the ones who are all wet.

Related …

5-hour swim meets too long; driving me crazy

Swim meets and my history of hugging

Yes! Trophies for all the kiddies!

Now ear this!

You’re the greatest swimmer ever! Now what?

RRS: C'mon, America! Let's all sing the national anthem!

It’s very pleasing to me when some old post finds a surprise audience. That’s what happened this week with this one from August ’12. Someone stumbled on this one about how proud I am to sing the national anthem and referred it to friends. Then they referred it to friends who referred it to friends and so on. It became one of the best-read stories of the month. So, naturally, I wanted to reprise it here.

Interestingly, I think I’ve detected a re-birth of people actually singing the anthem at sporting events. I find it heartening. Sing! Sing! Sing!

This will surprise loony right wingers who think they hold a monopoly on patriotism, but I get choked up hearing the national anthem.

Yes, even gay marriage supporting, Obama loving, universal health care backing, tree hugging, pot legalizing, tolerance preaching 99 percenters like me can still love America just as much as you do.

So it got to me yesterday watching the U.S. women’s rowing team on the podium singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with all the drive and joy that had earned them their gold medals.

I’d never seen any of these women before. Heck, the last time I saw anyone doing any rowing it was the studly Winklevii twins who crewed on the river while Mark Zuckerberg was busy screwing them out of a fortune in “The Social Network.” 

Chances are I’ll never see any of these women again for the rest of my life. It’s a pity because I fell in love with them all, even though I suspect today at least one or two of them would if they could if be enthusiastic participants in today’s Chick-fil-A gay kiss-in protests.

There’s been stories about some crabby athletes unhappy they were unable to publicize their commercial sponsors during the games.

It was clear to me these women were proud to be sponsored by the only one that matters: The United States of America.

Tears were rolling down their dimpled cheeks. They were busting with pride and were singing the anthem for all it was worth.

I wish they’d mic all these winners. It would be instructive.

Because when you see some of these appealing athletes singing the national anthem it gives the wrong impression that because they look good, they must sound good.

This is unlikely. In fact, they probably sound a lot like my late father, who in my mind is to the national anthem what Tony Bennett is to “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

He is its signature vocalist.

I say this because I was next to him for over 30 years at hundreds of sporting events where he was the only anthem-singing person in the stadium besides the professional doing it over the public address system.

And what a voice.

It carried great distances. I always imagined birds in the African savannah scattering in alarm from their cypress trees as he began the first few notes.

I remember all the beer vendors turning in unison to our section high up in Three Rivers Stadium, fearful, I think, that one of their colleagues had spilled three or four trays of empty aluminum cans down the concrete stairs.

He’d start off the tune about five seconds behind the professional and then, realizing his pacing error, would accelerate so he’d be about five seconds ahead.

This often confused the professional so he or she would race ahead of my father and the national anthem became a sort of off-key “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” duet where the singers are never in sync.

As a kid, of course, I was horrified by this. No one else in the stadium was singing at all. In fact, rather than sing, many of the Steeler fans turned to stare gape-jawed at us.

This was probably 30 years before “American Idol” and other reality shows that celebrate talentless louts. It’s a pity his poor timing wasn’t exclusive to “The Star- Spangled Banner.”

He could have been the William Hung of the 1970s.

I remember one time I said, gee, Dad, it embarrasses me when you sing the national anthem.

“Son,” he said, “it embarrasses me when you don’t.”

I was thinking of the old man last week when I took our 11 year old to a matinee Pirate game. We got some grub and settled in for a great afternoon basking in America’s pastime.

And when time came to sing the national anthem, I bolted out of my seat, stood ramrod straight, hat over my heart and, as I always do, just gave it hell.

The whole time I noticed out of the corner of my eye Josie’s increasing discomfort. I was ready for her when the song was over.

What, I asked, does my singing embarrass you? Is my voice too unrefined? Would you rather I just mumbled?

“That’s not it, Dad,” she said.

When I stood up, I’d put my foot on her hot dog.

Oskar Schindler & my persistent feelings of failure

(659 words)

I always feel as summer winds down an odd kinship with Oskar Schindler.

Remember him?

He was the German industrialist who cleverly — and at grave risk to his own life — saved more than 1,200 doomed Jews from the Holocaust.

The connection seems pretty thin, I admit.

He did so much and was justifiably memorialized in what you could argue was Stephen Spielberg’s finest film, “Schindler’s List,” from 1993.

It feels like I have done nothing.

And that’s where Schindler and I become one.

To me, the most indelible part of the movie is the end when Schindler falls to pieces in the devastating belief he’d not done enough.

He looks disdainfully at a gold ring and says it could have saved another life. His fancy watch disgusts him; it could have saved a family. He is revolted by the Mercedes-Benz in the driveway.

How many more souls could that have saved?

It’s because of Schindler I always feel anyone who dies satisfied dies having not done enough.

To bust that analogy clear down to atomic levels, I believe I wasted an entire summer.

I did not do enough.

I feel this way, of course, in particular with the kids. They’re 14 and 9.

They won’t be that ever again.

I’ve scoffed at maudlin friends who say they suffer from empty nest syndrome.

I tell them I look forward to a day when I can watch what I want, eat what I want, and do it all wearing shabbily comfortable clothes that would cause my loved ones to roll their eyes in fashionable distress.

But when summer days begin to dwindle and we’re fully geared up to start school as we will on Monday, I become wistful for lost time.

I wasted so much of it.

Did I devote enough hours to the needs of our children? Did I by being their daddy do anything to enrich their lives or their memories of this summer?

I feel like a failure.

It’s not like I was working all the time.

As you may have heard — and I’m sure you did, it’s what this blog is all about — I don’t work.

Unlike most of the rest of the civilized world, I am untethered by occupational concerns.

I try and keep busy. I have a bunch of events booked for the fall and am anticipating a fruitful time.

But I have nothing to show for the summer.

A guy like me with so much free time on his hands should be fluent in French, Spanish, Mandarin, Latin and those made-up languages you hear on the floors of the Star Trek conventions.

Instead, I’m fluent in “Seinfeld” catchphrases.

With all the time I have on my hands, I should be a scratch golfer, a skilled ice carver or a baseball fantasy league savant.

I should be a volunteer fire fighter or do busy work at some senior center, a place full of dear people who ache all day to see just one friendly face.

I wasted my summer.

Have I wasted my life?

I sometimes feel I have offended God and mankind by doing so little with my life.

That’s not me.

That line is a paraphrase of what are purported to be the last words of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519).

Maybe the most insightful man in human history died convinced he was a failure.

Yeah, just what did he do?

Oh, yeah, he painted the Mona Lisa, conceptualized the first flying machines, armored fighting vehicles, contributed to ground-breaking innovations in surgery, manufacturing and is remembered as maybe the most brilliant human being who ever lived.

I wonder if his office was above a friendly tavern.

I guess what I’m tying to say is if these two giants died feeling like failures, it’s okay if sometimes you and I do, too.

Every now and then we’re all going to feel like monumental failures.

At least we all have monumental company.

Related . . .

Daughter, 4, thinks Dad works too much

Marching on Gettysburg with daughter, 12

My career advice: Don’t be like me!

Vacation recycling near impossible

Hollywood’s best year ever? 1993

I am becoming left handed