We won that game three separate times, and then we lost.

Excluding Super Bowl losses and a playoff loss to the New York Jets a couple years ago, yesterday’s Patriots loss to the Arizona Cardinals might have been the most difficult loss to bear in my entire life, for the following reasons:

1. It broke a home opener winning streak which began ten years ago with a miracle comeback victory against Buffalo that I watched from within the confines of Gillette Stadium. It was one of only three times that my friend has ever been willing to hug me.

2. It was a perfect day for a football game, and home openers are always special. Troy Brown was inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame and Drew Bledsoe threw him one more pass on the turf of Gillette Stadium. Military jets soared overhead as the national anthem concluded. The sky was blue, the air was warm and the bacon-wrapped chicken chunks were a thing of beauty. The steak was cooked to perfection. It was a day fitting of a victory. A blowout, even.

 

2. The Patriots lost to the Arizona Cardinals at home. The Cardinals are not a good team.

3. The Patriot were not outrun, out passed or out tackled yesterday. They did not play well, but they were beaten by a blocked punt, a tipped ball that resulted in an interception, a phantom holding call and a phantom false start. Though the Patriots certainly deserved to lose the game, they lost the game thanks to a handful of unusual and somewhat freakish plays.

4. Worst of all, I thought the Patriots had won three separate times.

First, there was the fumble with two minutes to go that gave the Patriots the ball back within field goal range, down by two. Though it was foolish to begin celebrating the victory at this moment, we did.

Next was Danny Woodhead’s touchdown run which would have put us ahead by 5 with less than a minute on the clock, only to be called back by the aforementioned phantom holding call. We had already been celebrating victory for a full 30 seconds before we even saw the flag.

Finally, there was a the missed field goal, which looked good from our angle in the stadium, prompting us to begin celebrating victory again only to learn 10 seconds into our leaps and screams and high-fives that the kick went wide left.

The kicker had already made four field goals that day with ease. Two were over 50 yards. He had successfully kicked 24 consecutive fourth quarter field goals up until that point.

Then he missed a 42-yard field goal with one second left on the clock.

It was a series of emotional swings over a five minute period of time like few I have experienced in my life, and it left me empty and exhausted.    

My former students have said that I can be surly and demanding the day after a Patriots loss. My current batch of kids should count their lucky stars that we have the day off for Rosh Hashanah.

Perhaps I will feel a little better tomorrow.  

The Internet makes it a very small world

Yesterday I wrote about Erin DiMeglio, the first girl to play quarterback in a Florida high school football game. Uncertain about how I would react if my daughter asked to play football, I wrote a post parsing out some of my feelings on the subject.

Later that evening, Erin DiMeglio’s coach, Doug Gatewood, commented on the post and his wife, Bethany Gatewood, contacted me via Facebook.

An hour later Doug also contacted me via Facebook, asking to steal a line from the post for use with his football team this year.

I told him I’d be honored.

It an excellent reminder of the power of the Internet. Less than fifteen years ago, it would have been almost impossible for Doug Gatewood and I to exchange words. I would have read about Erin DiMeglio in the New York Times, wondered about how I would feel if she had been my daughter, conversed with my wife and perhaps some friends on the subject and moved on with life.

Today I am able to express my thoughts on the subject on a network connected to every other computer in the world, including Doug and Bethany Gatewood’s computer.

Presumably Erin DiMeglio’s computer as well.

Presumably as a result of a Google search or a Google Alert, Doug and his wife were able to find my post on the Internet and access social media to converse with me.

We sometimes forget how incredible this technology really is. It feels as if we have been living with the Internet forever, but not so very long ago, this type of communication would have been unimaginable.

It’s also a good lesson for me to bring back to my students. As we begin to live more and more of our lives online, we must remember how truly public our words are. While I have never been afraid of criticizing people when I disagree with their words or actions, this evening’s exchange with Doug and Bethany Gatewood serve as a reminder that the words we write can easily land in the laps of our subjects and often do.

I am not suggestions that criticism is wrong. Even harsh criticism is warranted at times. But it should be measured carefully before one sends it out into the world. For all intents and purposes, Erin DiMeglio, Doug Gatewood and Bethany Gatewood are sitting over my shoulder as a write,  capable of reading my every word.

Last night Doug and Bethany Gatewood did just that, and their words in response to mine meant a great deal to me. As a writer, there is nothing better than learning that my words have meant something to a person.

The fact that Doug and Bethany play an important role in the subject of my post made it even more meaningful. One of those moments I hope to never forget.   

My little girl playing football?

Have you heard about Erin DiMeglio, the first girl to play quarterback in a Florida high school football game? DeMeglio is the third string quarterback on a roster is filled with college prospects. “The star running back has committed to Miami, and its starting quarterback has offers from Navy and Air Force.”

She apparently has a cannon for an arm and has earned the respect of her teammates because of her skill and poise on the field .

DiMeglio had proved herself to the other players during spring and summer workouts, so when she officially joined the team, it was met with a respectful shrug. She has her own changing area in the girls’ locker room, and at the seven-on-seven camp last summer, she shared a room with the cheerleading coach. Otherwise, she is one of the guys, and they are protective of her.

As a father of a three year old girl, I read this story and had two divergent thoughts:

1. Based upon the way I played tackle football and my frequent attempts to inflict bodily harm on my opponents, I would not want my little girl playing the game with a bunch of boys who are larger and stronger than she.
2. I can’t imagine the pride that a father must feel upon learning that his little girl possesses the courage and inner fortitude required to play a game normally reserved for boys and men.

As the two opposing thoughts waged battle in my mind, I tried to imagine what I might say if Clara ever came to me and expressed a desire to play high school football.

Presuming she had the skills to play, it would be a tough call.

While I might attempt to steer her in the direction of a sport where her competition would consist of  fellow females, I can’t imagine stopping her from trying something that few people have ever attempted before.

That’s the thing about courage:  It cannot exist without risk.

If we protect our children from danger at every turn, we deny them the opportunity to be brave.

So no, I would not want my little girl to play on a boy’s football team, and yes, I would be bursting with pride if she did so.

Best race of 2012 without exception

Wouldn’t it be great if the Paralympics received the same amount of attention as the Olympics? Races like this are thrilling and inspiring beyond belief, yet so few of us will ever see something like them.

I’ll be showing my students this clip today in hopes of inspiring them to do great things despite any obstacles placed before them.  

Impromptu driving range

For someone who loves golf and entrepreneurism as much as me, I thought this was impressive:

While waiting in line for a Moth StorySLAM last week in SoHo, I watched a man set up a driving range in an alley between two building. Using real golf clubs and crushed milk cartons, he charged people for the opportunity to hit the milk cartons down the alley and into a green, plastic bin.

I was standing there for more than 30 minutes and he was never without a customer. 

I don’t think the man is getting rich off his idea, nor do I think it’s scalable to a larger market, but anyone that can bring golf to the city and make a buck at the same time is alright in my book.

   

Cardboard Tube Fighting

Cardboard tube fighting, the game that I played with my brothers and sisters when we were kids, is now a thing.

There is even a Cardboard Tube Fighting League.

The CTFL hosts tournaments and battles where cardboard tube fighters go head-to-head in an attempt to break their opponent's tube without breaking their own.

I expected to find the formalization of this game a little silly, but it turns out that I love the league’s three core beliefs:

• People need more ways to play and take themselves less seriously.
• Events can be fun without alcohol.
• Cardboard sword fighting is fun.

It’s hard to disagree with any of them.

It’s disappointing that can’t actually strike your opponent with the cardboard tube (the goal is to break your opponent’s tube by striking it), but I suspect that the founders of The Cardboard Tube Fighting League have taken the same approach to their sport that I take with football:

If I tell my friends that we are playing tackle, no one will play with me.

If I tell my friends that we are playing flag football, at least a few of them are game.

The Cardboard Tube Fighting League was probably interested in getting lots of people to play rather than getting lots of people hurt.

Disappointing but understandable.

Difficulty staying Faithful

I finished reading Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season by Stephen King and Stuart O’Nan, and while I enjoyed the bo0k, I have a few quibbles with it as well.

As a Yankees fan, I knew that reading the book would be difficult. The 2004 baseball season was the worst in Yankees history. After taking a 3-0 lead over the Red Sox in the battle for the pennant, the Yankees became the only team in baseball history to lose the next four games and thus lose the series.

This would be heart wrenching regardless of the opponent, but the fact that it was the Red Sox made it exponentially worse.

Still, I wanted to read this book. I’ve read everything else that Stephen King has ever written, and I adore the man.

While I haven’t quite read everything Stuart O’Nan has written yet, I like what I’ve read so far. More importantly, he was my professor for a writing class at Trinity College, so I got to know him a little bit and liked him a lot.

Even though I knew it would be hard to listen to these men describe the events of that 2004 postseason, I thought that I would be happy for them as well. As a native New Englander who grew up near Boston, I understand the suffering the Sox fans had endured. They deserved to win. At least this is what I had convinced myself of when I dove into the book.

I have three complaints about the book, and they all pertain to O’Nan.

First and most surprising, O’Nan engages in conspiracy mongering several times in the book, implying with all seriousness that baseball might be fixed. A remarkable confluence of events seem (in his mind) to be too dramatic and convenient to be anything but orchestrated, and he says as much more than once. King actually dismisses these claims at one point in the book, and rightly so. Like King, I find this kind of conspiracy theory nonsense to be exactly that:

Nonsense. But I know there is a small but vocal minority of sports fans who feel this way.

Yet when the long haired, loose-lipped Cowboy-up Red Sox of 2004 overcome a 3-0 deficit against a corporate team with twice the payroll that has embraced the moniker of the Evil Empire with enthusiasm, there is not a single mention of conspiracy theories to be found.

This annoyed me. If you’re going to imply that the fix is in several times over the course of the baseball season, you can’t ignore what would seem like one of the most orchestrated moments in the last 100 years of baseball.

Second, O’Nan is less than magnanimous when it comes to the Yankees. King has no love for my beloved team, but he is not mean-spirited about the team, either, He does not call them cheaters or question their character. O’Nan does so repeatedly, and it is not necessary.

Lastly, the nicknames that O’Nan uses when discussing the Red Sox players in the book made me bonkers. Nicknames have always been a part of baseball, but O’Nan takes it to an entirely new and truly bizarre level. Most of my friends are Red Sox fans, but I never heard them refer to Mark Bellhorn as Marky Mark, Pedro Martinez as Petey or David Ortiz as El Hefe (especially since Ortiz already has the often-used nickname Big Papi). It makes no sense. Was O’Nan inventing these nicknames himself, or did he hear some inebriated bleacher creature use these names and co-opted them for the book.

A good nickname is a thing of beauty. Naming your utility infielder after a former Boston-based hip hop musician turned serious actor is an act of stupidity.

Then again, I’m a diehard fan of the New York Yankees who died hard in October of 2004, so perhaps I am biased.  

I hate the Red Sox, but I love these guys

I’m listening to the book Faithful: Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season by Stephen King and Stuart O’Nan. It’s essentially a double-entry journal that chronicles the Red Sox for one season. It’s full of traditional journal entries, email exchanges, summaries of phone calls between the two men, and recollections of games they attended alone and together.

Even though I am a Yankees fan, I’m enjoying the book a lot, though I suspect I will enjoy it much less once I reach the postseason entries. By some stroke of genius, King and O’Nan chose to work on this book during the season in which the Red Sox win their first World Series since 1918.

Lucky bastards.

But having grown up in Massachusetts, I spent a lot of time around Red Sox fans, so listening to what King and O’Nan have to say about the team and the game of baseball is a little bit like going home.

I also like both writers a lot.

O’Nan taught at creative writing at Trinity College during my time there, and I was fortunate enough to squeeze in one class with him before he left. I’ve heard him speak a few times since then, and I’ve read several of his books, including most recently LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER. Years ago I read his nonfiction account of the Hartford Circus Fire, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Stephen King has become a bit of a hero to me, for several reasons.

Growing up without very few books in my home, it wasn’t until I was granted my own library card that I really began reading and falling in love with books, and many of those first books were written by Stephen King. NIGHT SHIFT, DIFFERENT SEASONS, THE SHINING, and CUJO were just a few of the novels I read that first summer, and I loved every one of them.

Eventually I would go on to read all of King’s work, including IT, which I have read at least a dozen times, and his Dark Tower series, which I consider a genuine masterpiece.

Two decades later, it would be another one of King’s books, ON WRITING, that would inspire me to continue writing when the possibility of a writing career felt impossible and hopeless. The first half of ON WRITING is an autobiographical account of King’s life as a writer, including his very humble beginnings as a short story writer for men’s magazines.  The image of Stephen King siting in the laundry room of his trailer, shoved against the washing machine, unable to afford medicine for his sick children, sent me back to the laptop ready and willing to conquer the beast.

At the age of ten, Stephen King opened my mind to the world of books and reading, and thirty years later, I have now joined his fraternity. It’s an incredible feeling. Sort of like idolizing a ballplayer as a kid and then finding yourself playing alongside that same player someday.

In reading FAITHFUL, I’ve learned a few things about King that I did not know, specifically in terms of his approach to time management. It turns out that he and I have a lot in common in this regard.

While watching the Red Sox game, King has a book in his lap, and in between innings, he will read. He estimates that he can read about 40 pages during the average baseball game.

I have also been known to do this, in addition to spending commercial breaks listening to audiobooks and podcasts or pounding away at the laptop. From time to time I’ve also been known to listen to an audiobook while watching television, especially when the show is somewhat mindless and predictable.

Even more impressive, King writes about how he will listen to the ballgame on his car radio but switch over to an audiobook in between innings, timing the two minute commercial break with his wrist watch.

Similarly, I can be found at the gym with two sets of headphones when running on the elliptical. One is a wireless pair connected to my iPhone, through which I am undoubtedly listening to an audiobook or podcast. The second pair is attached to the machine so I can listen to the television affixed to it. I will switch between these two headphones during a workout in order to take advantage of commercial breaks, which has caused more than one fellow gym rat to stare at me in confusion. Yesterday, for example, I was watching the replay of the Yankees game from the day before as I worked out, and similar to King, I would switch headphones between innings and listen to my book, which happened to be King and O’Nan discussing the Red Sox “June swoon.”

Fear not, boys. Things will turn around for the Sox soon enough.

I’ve often thought that if Stephen King and I had the chance to get to know one another, we would be fast friends. While this is unlikely to ever happen, I do hope that he reads one of my books someday, which isn’t asking much considering the number of books the man reads on a yearly basis. I wouldn't even need to know if he liked the book or not. Just knowing that the author who inspired a ten year old boy to read and a thirty year old man to write picked up one of my novels would be enough for me.

Exposing the lunatic Little League coaches for who they really are.

Here’s an idea I’m considering: Write a blog that examines the youth baseball culture in my town and/or  neighboring towns, with specific emphasis on assessing and critiquing the coaching style and the overall effectiveness and efficacy of the adults involved.

It’s recently come to my attention that although most of the coaches and parent volunteers involved in these organized baseball leagues are skillful at their jobs, a small percentage of coaches should not be working with young people. These are the coaches who take their team’s win-loss record personally and treat this childhood game as if it were their own version of professional ball. They are the screamers and the demeanors: the men who believe that a child will hit a ball more frequently and farther if he or she is made to feel rotten about each and every strike out.

It occurred to me that parents might want to know who these coaches are. They may want to know which coach berates his players on a regular basis and which coach circumvents the league rules in order to play only his best players in the playoffs.

Apparently there are also a number of backroom deals taking place at the beginning of each season that allows for certain teams to be stocked with the league’s best players year after year while other teams are comprised almost exclusively of less inexperienced, less effective ballplayers.

Not only would this be good information for parents to possess before deciding if their child should join a league or team, but I would love the opportunity to explore the motives behind a man who is willing to manipulate the system in order to ensure that his team of twelve-year old boys competes for the championship each year.

I’d also very much like to expose these jerks for who they really are.

But is this something that parents would bother to read before deciding upon leagues and teams?

While I’m at it, I might also want to address the behavior of umpires working in these leagues, at least if the umpire in the video below in any indication of the kind of men umpiring Little League games. If it were my son who had just struck out and been greeted by this umpire’s third strike call, it would’ve taken all my self control to not walk over to home plate and punch the guy in the face.

My new hero: A six year old boy

A six-ear old makes an unassisted triple play, and it’s not a silly, chase-the-runner-around–the-diamond situation. It’s fairly legit, requiring fielding skill, quick thinking and excellent reflexes.

It’s something you might see happen on a MLB diamond.

Kissing cousins

Quick. Which team logo belongs to the Texas Rangers and which belongs to the Minnesota Twins?

 

Yes, if you are a baseball fan, this was probably easy, but if not, don’t you think these logos a little too congruous?

And how many of you are still wondering what the hell the letter C is doing wrapped around the letter T in the Minnesota Twin’s logo?

A long period of self-imposed silence might be lifting

Three months ago, the Patriots lost the Super Bowl.

On Thursday night they began drafting new players for the upcoming season. In the past couple weeks we’ve received the schedule for the 2012 season, paid for our season tickets and watched closely as the team began signing free agents.

A lot of time has gone by since the Super Bowl, and a lot has happened in the football world,  but I am still not able to discuss the loss.

I’m still not able to discuss or even think about the Super Bowl loss in 2007.

I’m almost able to talk about the loss in the 1996 Super Bowl. In that game, Green Bay’s Desmond Howard opened the second half by returning the kickoff for a touchdown, ending any hope of a Patriots victory.

When that happened, I removed my shoe from my left foot and threw it through my friend’s wall. I still can’t believe I did it. It happened so fast that there was absolutely no thought involved at all. One second I was sitting on the couch, watching the game, and the next, my shoe was sticking out of the drywall, about five feet off the floor.

The room went perfectly silent for a moment. No one said a word. Every eye turned to me. Then my friend stood up, examined the damage and said, “That’s the perfect spot for our wedding photo. Just the right height and everything.” 

He and his wife, who was not quite as forgiving as my friend, eventually moved out of that house, but for the next five years, their wedding photo hung in front of the hole that my shoe left in their wall.

I think I’m ready to talk about that Super Bowl loss now in case you’ve been waiting.

Gratitude journal: Class or an AT&T dead zone

My daughter cuddled with me for a solid twenty minutes today, the longest on record.

We played hide-and-go seek for what felt like an hour. 

We assembled jigsaw puzzles together.

We tickled each other a lot. 

But no, tonight I am grateful that my friend, a Washington Capitals fan who watched his team defeat the Bruins in overtime tonight from the confines of the Boston Garden, has not fired off a text taunting me about the final score.

I’ll give him credit. He has class.

Or no cell service. 

Either way, I’m grateful.

No more home runs. Please. I’m begging you.

Omar Infante hit the first home run by a member of the Miami Marlins at Marlin’s Park yesterday, setting off the stadium’s “home run feature” for the first time.

Congratulations, Miami Marlins. You’ve found a way to make home runs so unpalatable that your fans will likely be rooting for long, fly balls to bounce off the outfield fences for double or triples instead of round trippers.

Honestly, what in hell were they thinking?

Unusual, inexplicable, tragic and occasionally victorious

Following the recent reappearance of my brother after a five year disappearance and the presumption that he was dead, one of my friends asked, “Why does stuff like this happen to you more than anyone else I know?” “What do you mean?” I asked.

He went on to explain that I have lived a life full of strange, unfortunate, pathetic and unbelievable moments.

Near-death experiences, an arrest and trial for a crime I did not commit, armed robberies, a suspension for inciting riot upon myself, and much, much more.

He went on to point out that even my career in publishing, my recent success with live storytelling, and achievements like being named Teacher of the Year contribute to the sense of an unusual life.

I suggested that everyone probably has stories akin to mine, but being a writer and a storyteller, mine are simply delivered in a more memorable fashion.

He didn’t buy it, and to be honest, I'm not sure if I do, wither. While I certainly know people whose lives have been at least as strange and diverse as mine, they are few and far between. For reasons that continue to elude me, it would appear that I was destined to lead a less-than-ordinary-and-frequently-challenging existence.

Sometimes this means that I spend 18 months sharing a room with a pet goat in the home of a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Sometimes this means I end up living in my car.

Sometimes this means I take up residence in a walk-in closet with a woman on a strictly platonic basis (though I admittedly was hoping for more).

Sometimes this means that I find myself living above a dog that was named after me.

These are stories only associated with housing (and not the only ones). The list of oddities, tragedies and rare victories is endless and growing.

Professional golfer Martin Kaymer’s remarkable hole-in-one reminded me of a recent this-could-only-happen-to-me moment on the golf course.

I was playing golf for the first time in this season, stuck in a sand trap, and I had already tried three times to launch the ball onto the green. Each time, the ball struck the lip of the trap and rolled back in.

On my fourth attempt, the ball struck the edge of the trap again, but this time, for reasons I cannot explain, it ricocheted straight up into the air. Unable to see the ball, I stood still, expecting to watch it come down in the rough on the far side of the green. Instead, it came straight back down, striking the brim of my hat, freezing there for a full second and then slowly rolling off my hat back into the trap at my feet.

It was a one-in-a-billion shot that I could never reproduce again if I tried. I had somehow managed to hit a ball that ultimately hit me.

In my five years of playing golf, I have hit some of the most horrendous shots in human history, but I have never seen someone come even remotely close to hitting themselves with the ball, let alone having it land on the brim of a hat like a dying pigeon.

My friend, Andrew, fell over in laughter upon watching it happen.

And rightly so. A shot as ridiculous and terrible like this never happens.

Unless you are me.

Gratitude journal: The almost perfect game

Yesterday I was grateful for poker, which I described as the perfect game.

Tonight I am grateful for golf, the almost perfect game. I played today thanks to a spat of unseasonably balmy temperatures, my first time on the links this year. I played well at times, poorly at others and finished with a score of 56, which stinks.

But still, it was golf. In March.

Like poker, golf is competition wrapped in a social milieu. Despite the ongoing battle for first place (or the more important battle to avoid last place), it is also time well spent with friends. It does not place nearly as many intellectual demands upon a player as poker does but adds a layer of physicality that poker does not possess. 

It’s a magnificent game, and I would play everyday if I could.

Here’s the thing that keeps golf from being as perfect as poker:

At the poker table, anyone can win. An inexperienced, stupid player can make a series of good decisions, become uncharacteristically aggressive, or pick up on a tell and win the game. At the poker table, every player, regardless of skill or experience, is a legitimate and persistent threat to the best player at the table.

Golf is very different. I play golf with guys who are in many ways playing an entirely different game than me. They are hitting the ball so much farther and higher and with such greater precision that beating them is a near-impossibility.

While poker provides a relatively level playing field for all players, golf does not. Experience plays an enormous role.

And some guys are just better.

Still, I love the game, despite its imperfection. Thankfully, winning and losing does not matter as much in golf because it lacks the head-to-head combat of poker.

Simply put, you cannot play poker without an opponent.

This is not the case for golf. Opponents are not required to enjoy the game. In many ways, you play every round of golf by yourself while in the midst of three other people and then compare your scores at the end of the round to see who played alone best.

If given the choice, I prefer the cut-throat, head-to-head battles that poker provides, but golf is a close second.

Gratitude journal: Just the right movie for a workout

Most of the elliptical machines that I use at the gym are equipped with televisions. I often spend my 30-45 minutes of cardio listening to podcasts, audiobooks and music, but occasionally, AMC, Spike, FX, or even ABC Family will run just the right movie to watch while working out. And sometimes that movie will be in just the right spot when I start working out.

Today the movie was Coach Carter, the true story of coach Ken Carter (played by Samuel Jackson) and his decision to bench his undefeated high school basketball team for academic reasons.

I’d never seen the film, but I’ve seen enough sports movies to understand the formula.

Sports movies make for an excellent workout.

Even better, I began working out during the last 45 minutes of the film, which features the Dead Poet’s Society moment when the team stands up for their coach, followed by the final game of the team’s season.

Well choreographed, well scored, nail-biting hoops with more dunks, alley-oops and three pointers than in a week of NBA games.

It could not have been a better moment to step on that elliptical.

The unexpected hazards of golf, including the potential to be stabbed

I’ve never experienced any serious altercations on the golf course in my five years of playing the game.

I once hit a duck with a golf ball. It toppled over but then righted itself and waddled away.

Another time I came close to throwing a friend into a pond after he laughed at me for embedding my tee shot into the opposite bank. But I stopped myself just short of grabbing onto him.

I often encourage my longer-hitting friends to hit their balls into slower moving groups, but they rarely do. Oftentimes I am reminded that it is not the group in front of us who is slowing play, but a group somewhere ahead of them.

I explain that it’s much easier to hate the people you can see than the people somewhere in the distance.

Last summer a group of older gentlemen told me about how they had been shouted at by a man playing behind them for their speed of play and threatened to hit his ball onto the green unless they moved off the green immediately. They hurried their putts and cleared the green as quickly as possible under a flurry of obscenities.

I advised the gentlemen to take an entirely different approach next time this happens. Whenever I am feeling rushed by a group of golfers behind me, I purposely slow down. Not a lot, but enough to send a signal that regardless of how many times they stick their hands on their hips, wave their arms in frustration or point in my general direction, they have no power over me.

If someone ever yelled at me to hurry up and began swearing at me, my pace would become absolutely glacial. I explained to the gentlemen that no matter what the lunatic behind you decided to do, it’s always win-win situation for you.

If he hits his ball onto the green, the odds of him actually hitting you are minuscule.  If he misses, you can pick up his ball, throw it into a pond, and have him banned from the golf course for life.

Hurrah!

If he hits you, you can have him arrested and sue him.

Hurrah!

Yes, this course of action could result in injury in the event he actually hits you with his ball, but the chances of serious injury are so remote and the benefits are so supremely satisfying that it makes it well worth the risk.

I thought this was excellent advice, and the older gentlemen actually agreed.  They bemoaned their decision to waver and crumble under the onslaught of the man’s threats and obscenities. One of the men actually smacked his head and scolded himself for being “such a goddamn chicken.”

But then I read this story in the Star-Telegram that has caused me to rethink my position entirely:

One man was stabbed with a golf club shaft after a brawl broke out when the threesome he was in tried to play through the group in front of them at a course at Eagle Mountain Lake.

Clay Carpenter, 48, of Springtown said he is recovering from a punctured femoral artery and massive blood loss.

"People get in arguments every day on every golf course in America," Carpenter said. "But 99.9 percent of the time no one takes it this far."

Carpenter, who was released from Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital on Sunday, said he might have to have more surgeries and is concerned that he could lose his leg.

I had no idea that you could stab someone with the shaft of a golf club. I’m not entirely sure how one might do this, but it’s good to know.

You never know when you you be facing a golf club-toting lunatic on the eighteenth green and quickly need a weapon.

Gratitude journal: Unexpected empathy

Tonight I am grateful to my students, who knew better than to tease me or even mention the Super Bowl to me. Two kids came in offering me a hug, but not another word was spoken about the debacle. I overheard one girl telling a small group of kids that it would be unwise to tease me about the Patriots loss, so perhaps there was a bit of fear mixed in with their empathy, but either way, I was grateful for their understanding and compassion on what was honestly a difficult day for me.

Gratitude journal: Patriots

Tonight I am grateful for the New England Patriots, who are once again heading to the Super Bowl after an emotionally draining game in Foxboro today. More than six hours after the game ended, I am finally home and still on edge.

It was an exciting game, but give me a blow out any day.

This will be the Patriots seventh Super Bowl in franchise history and their fifth in the previous decade. They have won three NFL titles thus far.

Impressive to say the least.

When I first became a fan of the Patriots, the team was not a winner. Games were held in the old Foxboro Stadium, which was little more than a concrete bowl surrounded by a dirt parking lot. Victories were few and far between, and the playoffs were a rarity indeed. In 1992, when I was living less than a mile from the stadium, the team went 1-15 and suffered through a locker room sex scandal that caused me to give up my season tickets.

There were more bad times than good during those years, and I suffered through many years of frustration.

Even when the team went to their first Super Bowl in 1986, they were embarrassed by the Chicago Bears.

I am extremely fortunate that the franchise has turned around and become one of the most winning teams in NFL history, and I count myself lucky to have been able to attend games on a regular basis for the last three years as a season ticket holder once again and prior to that on a less frequent but fairly consistent basis.

I will never forget the excitement and joy in watching the Patriots win the AFC championship tonight, and I am so grateful to have been there to witness this historic game.