One more thing to be thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

The Patriots beat the Lions, 34-9 on Sunday, which marked fourteenth anniversary of quarterback Tom Brady’s debut in the NFL.

On that same day in 2000, the Lions beat Tom Brady and the Patriots.

Final score: 34-9.

Coincidence? No way.

Glitch in the matrix. Bug in the program. Virus in the machine.

A sign that we are all living in one enormous computer simulation.

I began the day as a depressed and angry idiot. I ended the day with laughter and rainbows and sunshine. Literally. The lesson: Don’t give up hope.

Bad start to the day.

Arrived at my friend’s house, 40 minutes from my home, having forgotten without my ticket to the Patriots’ game. It requires an incredible amount of stupidity to do such a thing, and I felt like an idiot.

This meant that I would need to drive back home, pick up my ticket, and then drive to the game on my own, battling the traffic that would be building my the time I arrived in Foxboro.

It meant that I would not be driving with my friend, which is frankly one of the best parts of game day. The two hours that we spend in the car together is one of the best parts of my week.

It also meant that I would be paying $40 for parking instead of $10, because I would no longer be sharing the expense with my friend and the two others who we planned to pick up near the stadium.

It also meant that I wouldn’t be parking alongside my friends for our tailgate and would likely be hiking back and forth to their parking spot.

It also meant that I would be parking near the rear of the parking lot, slowing my departure by as much as an hour.

I didn’t think it possible that I could feel any worse. 

Then on the way back home, a police officer pulled me over for speeding.

I had reached the lowest moment of my day.

The police officer asked if I knew how fast I was driving. I did not. I explained that I was angry and hadn’t been paying attention.

He asked why.

I explained that my son had been in the emergency room late last night with a head wound. I showed him a photo on my phone.

I told him that my dog was making my wife crazy at home by barking and scratching, and that she was texting me continuously about it. I showed him the series of angry text messages. 

I told him that I had forgotten my ticket to the Patriots game and had cost myself a drive to Foxboro with my friend and at least two hours of additional driving on my own. 

The officer felt my pain. We talked for ten minutes. He let me go.

From that point on, my day turned around completely.

I arrived home and was able to kiss my daughter, who was asleep when I had left. I told her that I had come home just for her.

She’s five years-old, so she bought it. 

My drive to Foxboro only took 90 minutes. Record time. Surprisingly, there was absolutely no traffic at all. 

On the way to the stadium, alone in my car, I came up with two new ideas for novels. I also prepared and rehearsed a story for an upcoming Moth event and listened to three podcasts. Not as good as driving with my friend, but not bad.

Miraculously, I arrived at the stadium just 15 minutes behind my friends. As I pulled into the lot, the people parked beside my friends decided to move their car, which no one ever does. One of my friends ran up to the parking lot attendant and asked if I could have the spot, and shockingly, he said yes.

The odds that the people parked beside my friends would move their car just as I pulled into the lot are astronomical.

The meal, which consisted of donuts, sausage and peppers, burgers, and dogs, was free (and my friend had planned on it being free all along), saving me the normal $20 food fee and offsetting most of my additional parking fee.

Even though the Patriots were playing a 1:00 game, we had a game to watch on our television while tailgating because Detroit and Atlanta were playing in London. Atlanta was winning 21-0 at halftime, but I told my friends that Detroit would make a game of it in the second half. They scoffed.

Detroit won 22-21.

The weather, which was overcast and cold while we were tailgating, turned sunny and warm as we entered the stadium.

The Patriots routed the Bears. 51-23, and it wasn’t even that close. We laughed and cheered and had a great time. 

Our parking spot in the lot turned out so good that we were on the road by 4:05, and I walked into the house before 6:3o. Record time.

I saw a rainbow on the way home.

I was incredibly sad and angry when I discovered that I had left my ticket at home. The flashing red and blue lights of the police cruiser brought me to the depths of despair.

Then my day turned around completely. The universe smiled on me for a day. For me, this is unusual to say the least.

But it’s a good lesson. Sometimes things can turn around on their own through no effort on your own. Despair can transform into joy when you least expect it.

So don’t give up hope.

“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

Even if you are incapable of making a difference in your own life, the universe can smile upon you at any moment.

Wait for that moment.

The Patriots new jersey guarantee highlights the struggles of NFL players

There’s no greater testament to the fragile nature of job security in the National Football League than this offer from the Patriots Pro Shop.

I admire this violent, malicious man.

On a good day, former New England Patriots and current Washington Redskins safety Brandon Meriweather is a hard-nosed, hard hitting football player.

Those days seem few and far between. More often, Meriweather is a dirty player with a disregard for the safety of his opponents. During his tenure in New England, I watched him make purposeful helmet-to-helmet contact with opponents on several occasions, even after the player’s forward progress had been stopped.

He’s also known for hitting players after the whistle and hitting them out of bound with great frequency.

Meriweather has been fined at least four times over the last four years for hits to the head, with fines totaling more than $100,000, and he has been penalized countless times in games for unnecessary roughness.

Based upon the way he plays the game, it would seem that Brandon Meriweather is not a nice man.

But when Chicago Bear’s receiver Brandon Marshall criticized Meriweather after last week’s game for two penalties and a suspension for leading with his helmet, Meriweather responded with this:

"Listen, everybody’s got their opinion of things, you know. Everybody’s got their opinion. He feels like, you know, I need to be kicked out of the league. I feel like, people who beat their girlfriends should be kicked out of the league too.

"You tell me who you’d rather have: Somebody who plays aggressive on the field, or somebody who beats up their girlfriend. Everybody’s got their opinion. That’s mine. He’s got his."

Meriwether was criticizing Marshall for his role in a domestic abuse case involving his then ex-girlfriend back in 2008. Marshall was eventually found not guilty of the crime and was later arrested but not charged in a separate, similar incident. Even though Marshall is innocent of all charges, I can’t help but admire Meriweather for his comments.

The NFL is full of men who commit the kinds of violent crimes for which Meriweather criticized Marshall, and yet they often remain on the field, earning millions of dollars, and rarely are they criticized by their fellow player.

Check that: They are never criticized by their fellow players.

Unfortunately, in this instance Meriweather chose to criticize someone who has not been convicted of a crime, but two separate arrests for domestic abuse is troubling at best, and a reasonable person might call it a pattern.

In all, 31 NFL players have been arrested since the 2013 Super Bowl, including three for domestic abuse.

All three are currently on NFL rosters.

While I support the idea of innocent until proven guilty (perhaps more than most given my background), I also admire the fact that Meriweather is willing to criticize a fellow player for his off-field behavior.

It simply never happens.

And while it would’ve been better for Meriweather to criticize Marshall at the time of the incident rather than in self-defense, it’s a start.

Meriweather is right. If given the choice, I’d much prefer to watch an aggressive player as opposed to a player with a history of domestic abuse.

Unfortunately, Meriweather is more than simply aggressive. He is often malicious and dangerous. While he is admittedly the lesser of two evils when  compared to a man who hits a woman, I’m not sure if either man belongs on the field on Sundays.

The Patriots are proof-positive that perspective is hard, if not impossible

A friend and fellow Patriots season ticket holder sent this to me yesterday in one of the weekly email exchanges that we have prior to every game.

I thought it summed things up perfectly:

Tom Brady’s career record as a starting QB now stands at 139-39, making him the first quarterback in NFL history to be 100 games over .500.

In fact only twelve quarterbacks in NFL history have even won as many as 100 games. Pretty amazing – it’s the equivalent of going 13-3 for 10 straight seasons.

Think about all the wins we’ve witnessed, many firsthand, and yet the losses are burned into our memories like they only happened yesterday.

    

He must be thinking about the upcoming Patriots playoff game

Best use of duct tape ever

I received a gift in the mail last week from a former student. Here it is.

At first I thought that she has simply seen the Patriots logo, been aware of the versatile nature of duct tape and decided it would make the perfect gift.

If this had been the case, I would be have been quite happy with the gift.

But she transformed a great gift into an unforgettable, top-10 of all time gift by adding the following to the accompanying note:

Mr. Dicks, use this to shut the hollering mouths of the Jets, Giants and especially Dolphins fans in your classroom.

The principal informed me that duct taping the aforementioned children’s mouths was not appropriate (something I also suspected), but that’s okay.

When it comes to gift giving, it’s always the thought that counts.

My wife and children are ruining football for me.

I attended the Patriots game on Sunday. The weather was spectacular, the pregame tailgate menu was superb, and most important, the Patriots won.

It was the first game in more than a month for me. I missed both home games in October thanks to my book tour and a wedding.

I was happy to return to Gillette Stadium on Sunday. I love attending Patriots games. When I was young, I made a list of life goals, and one of them was to become a New England Patriots season ticket holder.

I’ve been dreaming about these Sunday afternoons (and occasional Monday nights) for many years.

While attending these games often means the loss of an entire Sunday, there are only eight home games a season (six for me this year), so it isn’t too big a burden.

 

Except now I have a wife and a daughter and a son who inexplicably continue to do fun and cute and memorable things while I am away at the game. Rather than placing themselves in suspended animation or parking themselves on the couch, anxiously awaiting my arrival, they do stuff that I want to do, too. They continue to exist, and I find part of me wanting to exist alongside them.

I miss them, damn it. It’s so annoying.  

Five years ago a day spent at the Patriots game was pure bliss for me.

Now I miss stuff like this, making the games slightly bittersweet. 

  

The three day, three month, three year test

Last year the New England Patriots played the Kansas City Chiefs on a Monday night in Foxboro. My fellow season ticket holder could not attend the game for less than acceptable reasons, and I could not find a soul who was willing to attend the game with me.

The freezing temperatures and the probability of arriving back home in Connecticut well after 2:00 in the morning (if we were lucky) deterred anyone from wanting to take the extra ticket and join me.

I hemmed and hawed all day about going to the game alone, knowing that if I went, I would be driving home from the game in the dead of night by myself. I’d also be watching the game from the icy confines of Gillette Stadium without the benefit of a friend’s companionship or a pre-game tailgate party.

In the end, I chose to remain home.

Last week I planned on attending a Moth StorySLAM in Manhattan. I had a story prepared and was ready to make the trip on my own (again, no one was willing to join me), but at the last minute, I chose to stay home. I had spent 5 of the last 6 days on the road, camping with my fifth graders, attending the Patriots home opener and traveling to Troy, NY for a book signing. With so much time spent on the road, I decided that I would be better off staying at home rather than enduring another long, late night drive on my own.

In the past two years, these two decisions represent two of my greatest regrets. I’m completely annoyed with myself for each decision, and I cannot foresee a time when I will not feel this way.

When it comes to making decisions like these, I use a “three day, three month, three year” test.

As difficult as it might be to travel to and from Gillette Stadium or New York City on my own, late at night, will I regret my decision three days later? Though I may be tired or even exhausted the next day, how will I feel about my decision three days from now, when I am well rested? Will I regret not having chosen the more difficult road?

What about three months later? When I look back on the missed opportunity, will that restful evening at home come close to matching what could have been? Will I even remember what I did on the night that I could have spent watching Monday Night Football or telling a story on a Moth stage?

What about three years later? What will mean more to me?

A forgotten evening at home amidst a thousand other evenings at home or the memories from a rare Monday Night football game?

Or the missed opportunity of taking the stage at a Moth StorySLAM and entertaining an audience of strangers with a story from my life? Perhaps even winning the StorySLAM and earning the right to perform in another GrandSLAM?

I am not implying that an evening spent at home with my wife and children is a forgettable, wasteful experience. Those evenings are some of the most cherished moments of my life. But I also believe that we must take advantage of the considerably less frequent opportunities like a Monday Night Football game or a Moth StorySLAM when they present themselves. The time we spend with our families and friends creates the fabric of our lives, but those moments we spend doing things that so many do not punctuate our lives and create the bright, specific memories that last a lifetime. We cannot allow a few hours of lost sleep or chilly temperatures or the promise of a bleary-eyed day at work prevent us from doing those things that so many people skip in favor of an evening in front of the television or surfing the Internet.

When making a decision about whether or not to do something that is hard, we cannot allow the subsequent 24 hours to dictate our decision. We must look ahead, three days, three months and three years, to see how we might then feel about our decision.

Perspective is a powerful tool in decision-making. While we can never know for certain how we will feel, we can predict how hindsight might make us feel. This is what I do when deciding between something that is easy and something that is difficult.

Tomorrow doesn’t matter. I can always survive tomorrow.

Will I regret this decision in three days, three months or three years time?

In terms of last years Monday Night Football game and last week’s StorySLAM, the answer is decidedly affirmative.  

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.