The Meet

Ha!  Bet you thought this was about me meeting someone, didn’t you?  Nah.  It’s the noun form of “meet” as in gymnastics meet.

Last Sunday was the first official meet that my oldest daughter has participated in.  She’s been doing gymnastics for about two years now, I think.  She transitioned from dance to this.  I’ll admit to being a little bit sad when she danced her last recital.  She was so good and having so much fun, I was going to miss seeing them (my youngest is still in dance so there will still be recitals to see but she is also in gymnastics.  I imagine my time at recitals is limited).

My oldest has really taken to gymnastics. For the most part, she cartwheels more than she walks these days.  The recent shift in my destination made that a little difficult though.  She used to practice all the time in the house we used to live in but now when she tries it in my new living room, she ends up hitting the chair or the coach or her little sister.  Just not as much room unfortunately, but that’s what basements are for, right?

After a few years of just learning gymnastics and then moving up through the different class levels, she finally got to “team” and Sunday was her first official meet.    I had the girls last weekend and since the meet was two hours away, I decided to take them down the night before and we would stay at a hotel.  This alone would have been enough.  My girls love to stay at hotels.  Unfortunately, we got on the road later than I wanted so by the time we got there it was almost 7:30 and instead of maybe seeing a movie or going for a swim in the hotel pool, it was a choice between going out to eat or having room service.  That really wasn’t a question.  The girls screamed “Room service!” and thus I had one the worst meal of my life.   Well, the stuff I ordered was terrible.  The girls’ chicken tenders were delicious, though. 

We managed to get up, get breakfast and to the meet in time although we did cut it close.  My ex took the gymnast from the truck to get her hair done while her sister and I went to find a place to park.  We went to the go into the meet only to find that it cost $10.00 and I had no cash.  For some reason, the teen-ager manning the entrance with a lockable cash box and a hand stamp for the “ticket” didn’t take credit cards.  Imagine.  A quick dash to a nearby ATM (thankfully located in the strip mall we were in) and we made our way to the seats held by my ex (she had already been there for at least 20 minutes). 

The competition began and my heart swelled.  I believe there are few things in life more rewarding than seeing your own flesh and blood do something they love doing.   Of course, it took a while to actually see her do her thing.  These meets, as I now understand, are four events:  the beam, the floor, the bar and the vault.  The teams (there were two other gymnastic groups competing) split up into smaller groups and all four events went on at the same time, the groups rotating as they finished.  It wasn’t until my daughter started her first routine, the beam, that I noticed they were keeping individual scores.

I actually wish I hadn’t seen that.

You see, up until this point, all of my daughter’s gymnastic exhibitions and practice has all been for fun;   to see her do it; to watch her challenge herself to do a back walkover (not really sure exactly what that looks like but I remember the term).   Now she’s being judged on what she’s doing and I guess I should have realized that would happen at some point, I wasn’t ready for it.  Personally, I didn’t want to know her scores and I didn’t want to compare them to the others performing but I did.  You can’t help it.  Seeing how you stack up against others is at the core of competition, right?   

Midway through the competition, after my daughter did the routine she was in rotation for, I noticed the award cart off to the side.  It was loaded with medals and trophies.  I leaned over to my ex and asked “Is this one of those deals where no one is a loser and everyone gets a trophy?”  She smirked and said, “No. This isn’t like soccer.”  You see, when my girls did soccer, everyone got a trophy even though the team they played on came in last place in the standings.

I have never been a fan of the “everyone is a winner” mentality that seems to permeate over child sports these days.  Can’t let anyone know they failed, so give them a “participation award.”  I’ve never thought that was really healthy for the child as they then think they get rewarded all the time in life when that will rarely happen once they get older.

As the meet went on, I noticed that my daughter’s scores weren’t as high as the other girls and in some cases, toward the bottom.  It wasn’t that my daughter couldn’t do the things she was doing.  She can and she’s very good but she has a bit of a concentration problem.  She gets distracted easily and tends to mess up when she does...unless it's walking from event to event.  If they gave medals for proper composure as you move from one event to the other, she would have an armful of them.  Head up, arms back, tip-toeing as she walked with legs straight.  Is that an Olympic event yet?  I mean, they have ping pong, why not this? 

On the routines, though, she wasn’t as good as the others but this is her first event and she was having more fun than she was being serious about nailing the scores.  This was fine with me.  I would prefer her to have fun rather than stress out over getting a perfect score.  I’m sure that will come in time but for now, let her be a kid. 

Then the competition was over….

…and they started calling out the winners…

First of all, my ex and I realized we may have been wrong about this not being like soccer…especially when they brought out the stands for the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place winners…and then the 4^th, 5^th, 6^th, 7^th, 8^th, 9^th and 10^th place spots.  It was funny because the #1 spot was the highest stand and then they had descending levels for each one after, the smallest being 6^th place.  The rest were just markers on the floor.  I commented to my ex that I was surprised they didn’t go beneath the floor for the other levels. 

It was looking like more kids were going to get awards than we originally thought but as they started announcing and my daughter wasn’t up there on the stands, I started to get worried.  I was so proud of how she would cheer her teammates when they were called but I was worried how she was going to feel if she didn’t get something.  My ex and I would handle it as we should but to be frank, I didn’t want to face it.  I didn’t want my child to be upset because she didn’t get a medal and there were some girls who were getting 5 or 6. 

Finally, in the floor routine awards, she got a medal.  Sure it was for 10^th place but she was so happy and I was so happy for her.  You’d think she just got gold at the Summer Olympics she was beaming so much.  She really did have something to be proud of as I have since learned that the medals are based on a percentage of top scores.  Coming in 10th isn't so bad when you consider she was in the largest group. 

She also received a small trophy for participating like everyone else did but again; it was like she won it because of her perfect score in all four categories.  And to make things even better, her group won overall in the competition so a big trophy was awarded to them.

Ultimately what came out of this was the “parent” moment where at first I wanted my child to earn what she won and if she lost, she lost but then I quickly switched to “Oh, give her something.  She’s going to feel so sad if you don’t” mode.  Turned out she got both: one for her performance and one for participation so I didn’t have to worry about it but I did. 

We like to think we’re strong parents and will always do what is fair and right for our children but when faced with the possibility that your child may be sad or upset about something, all that goes out the window.  The trophy for us as parents is to see your kid smile and when you see it happen, it’s like you’re standing on the number 1 platform because you’re the winner. 

And let’s face it, if you’re children are happy, you ARE the winner.

Izzie Socks

I got a cat and yes, the title of this post reflects his name. 

I believe if you are going to have an animal, you should be creative with the name.  His full name is actually Izzie Cutie Froggy Socks.  I can’t take credit for the full name (and probably don’t want to).  My daughters, 5 and 7, came up with pieces of the name.  My dad came up with Socks because the cat has white paws that contrast with his gray fur.  The girls came up with Cutie and Froggy for …whatever reasons.  Actually, my 7 year old came up with Cutie and makes sense since the cat is a cutie.  My 5 year old came up with Froggy and maybe that makes sense because she’s 5 years old.

For Izzie, I’m not sure if I misheard them but ultimately, I think I came up with Izzie and then strung them together.  So we have the full name, but I’ll probably just stick to the first name mostly and first/last when the mood strikes me. The full name will be reserved for when he is in trouble for pooping on the floor.  “Izzie Cutie Froggy Socks, you better get in here RIGHT NOW!”  

When I was growing up, we always had pets and mostly cats.  We had one dog, Sam the Basset – “Dog of the Desert, Keen of Eye, Swift of Foot” as my dad used to describe him (is it any wonder where I get my pet name fetish?),  and plenty of cats; too many to name and names to embarrassing to repeat here.  When I was on my own, I never had any pets mainly because I lived in apartments that didn’t allow them and I couldn’t afford them (which was more the reason than the bylaws of the apartments I lived in).  When I was married to my first wife, we ended up with two cats and somehow I got custody of them after we divorced  I didn’t mind, though.  When I was dating the woman who would become my second wife, I had to give the cats back to the first wife because the soon-to-be-second wife was very allergic to them.  It was hard but I was in love and the house was much cleaner after the cats were gone. 

So fast forward almost a decade and I am now a cat owner once again.  I considered a dog and would actually love to have one.  With my job, however, I travel and I can’t afford to put him in a kennel every time I have to hit the road.  Outside of that getting real expensive, it just wouldn’t be fair to the dog.  With a cat, however, I could be gone a week and as long as I had a continuous feeder and water, the cat would be fine.

When I first brought the cat home, I couldn’t help shaking the notion that he was a child.  I would tip toe around him while he was sleeping and if I had to go out, I would hurry back to make sure he was okay.  Much like the times I did that with my children, the cat was fine too. (That’s a joke, folks…I never left my kids alone unless it was an emergency trip to the beer store and when I did that, I gave them a broken bottle to protect themselves with). 

People may think I got the cat for my girls, but that’s not necessarily true. Sure, they wanted one and knew they could get one now that they had two houses to go to and one of them didn’t have a highly allergic adult living in it.  Still, I got the cat for me.  Pets are great companions regardless of what type of animal they are…although I suppose living with a grizzly bear might be tricky…especially getting it to go in a litter box but I guess for bears you would have to have indoor woods because you know what they say about bears and woods.  Huh?  Huh?  Get it?  See what I did there?  Heh…anyway…

Now I have little Izzie Socks to join me on my journey to the next destination in life and I’m glad he’s here.  I can now talk to him and it not be as weird as when I was just talking to nobody (but maybe only by a little bit).  Not that it’s all fun and games.  The darn cat barely lets me get any typing done as he likes to crawl up my leg, onto my lap and then onto my desk.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to retype this because he ran across the keyboard.  At one point, my spell checker told me I should have gotten a bird. 

Maybe he wouldn’t need so much attention if he had another cat to play with.  Maybe I’ll get six more. Nah, if I did that, my destination would surely be known:  Alone.  Forever. 

Except for the seven cats and probably never seeing the top of my desk again.

Paths

I’ve always believed that you should never have any regrets in life.  Where you are right now was from the path you walked on to get there.  There are times when we want to say I wish I never did this or didn’t do that, but that’s wasted energy.   You can’t help where you are now but you can, to a certain extent, control where you are going.

Another aspect to this is the belief (or disbelief) that your destiny is predetermined either by God or the Universe or a giant cat that lives in the mountains somewhere.  I’m not entirely sure if I believe this but there is some amount of comfort in thinking it’s true.  Why?  I think it comes out of moments of despair or when life takes you down a road of broken glass and rotting vegetables.  You think, “Why did this happen to me?” and you are told “It’s God’s plan” or “Life is like that” or the ever popular “Shit happens.” 

Shit does happen but we can sit there and smell it or we can move on.  I think it’s entirely too easy to give up or get depressed about your current state of life but the truth is if whatever problems you faced left you alive, then you’re probably going to be okay.  If you stop and dwell on what happened, you’ll get stuck like tires spinning in the mud.  Put that thing in four wheel drive and move out of the muck, man.  There’s a lot more road ahead.

Why am I starting my new blog with this?  Mainly because as of right now, 2012 will go down as probably the worst year in my life.  There are still two and half months to make up for the previous nine and half but I doubt a total comeback is possible.  I’m down 48 to 10 in my game with 2012 and I need more than a few Hail Mary’s to even the score. 

It’s funny because when things were better, I used to comment about some of the turns I took while growing up and what would have happened if I took a left instead of a right.  What if I had stayed in Arizona instead of moving to Texas in the mid 80’s?  What if instead I stayed in California instead of moving BACK to Texas when I did that in the late 80’s?  What if I had more confidence when I was younger when dating and pursued harder the woman who was then the woman of my dreams?  What if I never grew that porn-star moustache I had for most of the 90’s?  What if I never married my first wife? 

These questions were all put aside by simply saying, “Well if I had done that, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”   Those decisions led me to where I was as if it was all planned out.  When life is good, that’s a great feeling to have but when life is less than good, you tend to go back and wonder if you made the right choices. 

And therein lies the problem.  You can’t go back.  You can’t undo the decisions you made so no need to start wondering what would have happened if you made different ones.  Life is life and whether our ultimate destination is known or unknown, it really doesn’t matter because YOU don’t know what is going to happen.  Instead waiting for the sign to change from “Don’t Walk” to “Walk,” just go ahead and walk.

God, the Universe nor that giant cat up in the mountains won’t care if you’re jaywalking.