Mother's Intuition

You ever think about the Christmas List?  When I was a kid, I made a list of things I wanted for Christmas.  I knew I wouldn't get all of them (sometimes hardly any of the specific things I mentioned) but I knew making a list was important.  It served to hype up the season and get myself excited, and it also served to let everyone know what I wanted.  Like many kids (or so I imagine) I always took great pride in my list.  I posted it front and center on the refrigerator for all to see, and I'd keep an eye out for people looking at it.  When Christmas rolled around, I was always happy with my gifts, though sometimes they weren't the ones on the list.  There was one thing that tied the gifts together though: Mom.  Either Mom directly bought it and gave it to me, or she had advised someone in what to get me, or cleverly disguised a gift from "Willie Mays" or whatever.  You could always tell the thought Mom put into buying Christmas gifts.

Her thought processes, though, ranged from the extremely cryptic to the flat out obvious.  I remember, once, receiving a call when I was 10 or so from my Mom in early December.

"Hi, Andy?"

"Yeah, Mom?"

"Uhh, yeah, do you like "War...craft?" 

"Yeah, I do, Mom."

"Oh, OK.  Do you like "Might...And...Magic?"

"Yeah...why do you ask?"

"Oh, I was just wondering." (Click)

Can't blame the lady for wanting to get it right.  Other times, though, it was mysterious.  I remember in College I got a printer.  It's a very nice printer; I still use it to this day.  It scans, copies, prints photos, and the ink is really affordable.  The thing is, though, that I never told anyone I needed a printer.  The printer I had at the time was a piece of junk that barely got the job done and was on its last legs  Come Christmas time, though, Mom gave me a printer though I had just barely realized I needed one.  Chalk that one up to Mother's Intuition I guess.

I think Moms are supposed to have an innate sense of knowing when their kids need something.  Being the fourth kid of the Patrick line, I think I reaped an intangible benefit of Mom having honed this skill through the years.  By the time I reached every age level, Mom was so well polished at the art of coming through in the clutch that I didn't even realize it was happening.  Things just went right, and that was the way of the world.  Even though she worked until at least 5:00, there was always a warm dinner at home at night.  Whenever practice had ended, there was always a ride ready to come get me.  Whenever I tore a hole in my shirt jumping over a fence to make prank phone c--I mean, jumping over a fence for fun and nothing else--there would always be another shirt there ready to take its place.  These may sound like trivial and obvious things, but I've started to realize that they aren't for everyone, and they didn't have to be.  If it weren't for Mom orchestrating all these things, then my childhood wouldn't have been as carefree as it was.

I wonder if Moms strive to get to the point where their kids don't even realize they're doing the things they're doing.  Mom always did everything without too much fanfare.  She never made a big deal about her birthday, or fished for thank yous at dinner, or anything like that.  She simply made sure it was done, and took joy in the fact that her family was safe and happy.  That's pretty amazing.  Maybe that's what Mother's Intuition is: just a practiced skill derived from knowing how to keep the family safe and happy.  If so, my Mom's pretty darn intuitive.

Brothers

Quick refresher course: I like video games, I rented them often, I thought my brother was the greatest video game player when I was a kid. With that in mind, let's flash back to the year 19xx.

The year is 19xx (I don't actually remember the year but I was around 7 or 8 years old). My brother and I had rented Mega Man 3. Mega Man 3 was a game where you weren't just a regular man, but a weird robot man that could absorb special powers from other robot men by killing them. So your goal was to pick a stage, get past the evil guy's lair (mostly by jumping and shooting) and then killing the guy himself at the end. There's more to it, but you get the idea. Each Mega Man game had eight evil guys you had to kill before getting to the final evil guy, and you could do them in any order you liked. When you beat a boss, you were given a password, and if you wanted to turn off your Nintendo, you could restart your progress by inputting the password when you started playing again.

Anyways, so my brother and I had rented this game. We took turns trying to beat the boss. Most of the time this involved me failing miserably and then handing the controller off to my brother who would do much better. In fact, I think he had beaten every one of the evil guys except for one: Magnet Man.

Look at this guy: dude has a magnet on his head. He's serious business. He was serious enough business in fact, that Doug and I had quite a time trying to beat him. I remember us trying more than once before having to call it a night and both having to go to school. After school got off I went home to try my hand again at the dreaded Man of Magnets. I had some time to the game myself before Doug got home, and I had to relish it. We were lucky to have a second TV in our house, and it didn't have cable, which meant it was free for Doug and I to play all we wanted. That said, sharing was strictly enforced. Once Doug got home, we had to take turns (unless, of course, one person "broke the other's concentration" which was a policy liberally enforced). In the time before Doug got home, though, somehow I had managed to beat Magnet Man. Don't ask me how; it was some combination of blind luck and sheer force of will.

This was a big moment for me; I think it was the first time I beat Doug to anything. Of course, I didn't really think of it that way. I thought of it as doing my part for the team. Doug would come home, hear the good news, and then we'd progress straight on to the boss together. That, unfortunately, wasn't the reaction he had. Doug wanted to beat the level for himself, and he was actually kind of mad that I had done it without him. We had what resembled an argument between brothers seven years apart, and I'm not even positive we played that night. The next morning though you can be dang sure we kept going in the game. Doug and I had a neat relationship growing up; we could get mad and yell at each other, but once we got a good night's sleep, all was forgiven. No apologies were sought for or given; we just reverted to being brothers without grudges. It was understood that whatever had happened before happened, but it wasn't big enough to get between us. We just let it lie, and moved on.

I remember at times wondering if there should have been more apologies handed out, but now I don't think so. The dynamic between us, at least from my angle, never begat any grudges, and I hope it was the same way with him. I wonder if all brothers are this way. I think the moral of the story is: don't let stupid nonsense get between you and your brother/friend/partner/whatever; there are magnet men (and their proverbial counterparts) that are far more important to focus on.

Gentleman Jim

So Jim Thome just the other day hit his 600th home run. This is a pretty startling athletic feat; only seven other players have done this, and they belong to three categories: Hall of Famers (Aaron, Ruth, Mays), surefire hall of famers (Griffey, A-Rod), or surefire hall of famers if not for PED suspicion (Bonds, Sosa). Jim Thome is also the nicest guy in baseball. One would think that these two things combined would make a huge baseball story, but it's not getting that much love. I particularly think that it's getting slighted when compared to Derek Jeter's 3000th hit, a feat accomplished by twenty eight people. I have a few theories:

1) In light of past steroid use by other sluggers, people are associating Thome with steroid use by proxy. I get it; baseball has tainted our minds forever. We can't really look at any random feel-good comeback story without wondering if it was a product of chemical use. When you look at a monstrous slugger like Thome, it's easy to think that he's all 'roids. That said, Thome has never been connected with steroids. He wasn't on the Mitchell Report, he wasn't named by Canseco, and there haven't been whispers around the media about him. Furthermore, hitting home runs is all Thome does. We're not talking about a guy like Bonds, who went from a great 5 tool player to the most prolific masher in history. We're talking about a big guy who stayed big and did what he had always done.

2) Thome does not play for a large market team. Thome plays for the Minnesota Twins, and before that he played for the Chicago White Sox. The American League Central has never been a division where most of America looks to for action. Thome is now on his 5th club (Indians, Phillies, ChiSox, Dodgers, Twins) and can't really be considered "Mr." anything, like, say, Jeter is. Jeter is an iconic Yankee, so he has the backing of the biggest fanbase in American Baseball.

3) Major League Baseball is hedging it's bet for a few years with regards to power hitters. This is related to #1, but focuses more on the sport as a whole. Major League Baseball might not want to trump up a huge slugger as a model for the game just in case a story does break that the involved parties were juicing.

4) Thome's secondary skills are overlooked. To the untrained eye, Derek Jeter is a fabulous hitter that is made even better by the fact that he's a shortstop. Jim Thome is a fat dude that drops bombs. While most of the world can't seem to fathom the idea that Jeter wasn't a good fielder, the simple fact that he is a shortstop makes his feat that much more awe inspiring. Jim Thome's secondary skill? Getting on base. Thome got on base at a .403 clip over his career, good for 6th among active players (Helton, Pujols, Manny, Berkman, Giambino). Unfortunately the majority of the baseball loving world is just as slow with realizing the benefit of the walk as they are of seeing Jeter's poor defense work, so Thome comes off as a one dimensional player while Jeter is hailed as a toolsy beast.

It's a shame. It's a darn shame. Gentleman Jim is among the best hitters we have had the pleasure of witnessing in our lifetime, and this great milestone may be the pinnacle of his career, and baseball just isn't giving him his due because of circumstances beyond his control. Well done Jim.

The Bonnell Hurdle

I didn't always like writing. When I was in Jr. High, I felt the same about writing as did every other kid; it was just something that came along with school. Sure, I wrote stories when I was a little kid, but those died out as I got older. When I was in school at that age, I wrote in the same manner as I did any other homework assignment; uncaringly. This made for quite the shock when I reached high school and I ran into the entity known only as "Mr. Bonnell."

Mr. Bonnell was his own man. He wore a bow tie, rode a cruiser bike to school, rang a bell to signify the start of class, and addressed everyone by Mr. and Miss. He was, to put it lightly, old fashioned. During the summer going into my Freshman year of High School, Mr. Bonnell required all incoming students to write a paper on a book of their choice from a small list. I chose "The Hobbit" because I had already read it, and thus, didn't have to do any extra work. My paper was what I had assumed a paper was supposed to be; grammatically correct in most ways. I didn't really care about what the content was, because my 8th grade teacher cared only about proper grammar. It didn't matter to me that the entirety of my paper was just a rough summary of the book in two pages, as I thought I had done a fine job. Mr. Bonnell politely disagreed.

After I read my paper to him in private as all students did, he explained to me that my paper wasn't quite up to standards. To sum up; I got a D-. It was quite the shocker as my first grade of my High School career wasn't one to write home about, so clearly I had work to do. I spent the rest of the first semester trying to figure out what to do, and mostly failing, though occasionally I gained slight progress. Up until the last paper of the quarter the highest grade I had received on a paper was a C-. The last paper of the semester was on George Orwell's classic, 1984. I had to try something new. I told my Mom (God bless her for putting up with all my writing nonsense) that I would go a different route. I was going to throw style out the window completely and be totally structured with my paper. My essay would consist of quotes and explanation. I would have a short introduction, a short conclusion, and one sentence at the bookends of each paragraph. Other than that, I would have nothing but quotes and explanation to prove my point. "Winston did this" and it meant that. It was bold, but I had no option left other than the hail mary. When I had finished reading that essay to Mr. Bonnell, he sat there staring at it blankly. He carefully pondered how to break the news to me. I knew I had done something wrong.

"This is exactly what I've been looking for, Mr. Patrick."

The clouds parted. Light shined down through the atrium and onto me, straight from the heavens. The wisdom and mysteries of the stars were being revealed to me as all happiness flowed through me. Mr. Bonnell was finally pleased with my work. He went on to tell me...I don't know. I don't even remember the particularities of that conversation beyond "you did it." All I knew was that I had somehow figured out how to write a paper, and I did it by breaking it down to its most basic elements, shrugging, and hoping I got there. That day was a turning point for me; I would strive to be as terse as possible in my academic writing, and it hasn't failed me since. Sure, I don't follow that model in blog-format ramblings, but that's why nobody reads this blog but me, and those who love me an inexplicable amount.

At what Cost?

Growing up in Foster City was really, really hard. I'd try to communicate to you how difficult it was, but I'm afraid the english language has no such words. Until "undifficult" becomes a word, I think I'll just have to abstain. One such undifficult summer saw Joe, Kevin, off-and-on 4th musketeer Steven, and I trying to find refreshment on a hot day. It was a blisteringly hot 90 degrees outside, and we had no money. Our parents, the sole source of money, were at work, and we only had water to help us. Joe had one option, though, and in his freezer for whatever reason was a bottle of Coca-Cola. The only problem was that, since the Coke was in the freezer, it had been, well, frozen.

It was a rock. We tried to get that coke out, and maybe just let it thaw to allow us to drink the coke slushee, but the coke wasn't having it. We tugged, pulled, twisted, banged, hit, sledged, punched, and every other violent verb you can think of'd that bottle of coke. We wanted that coke; we needed that coke. After thoroughly beating into submission, though, we realized that we just needed to let it thaw. As a last ditch effort, Joe took a butcher knife out of the cupboard and tried to cut it open. When he stuck the knife in, unfortunately nothing happened. We expected sweet sweet coke to drip out, but it didn't. Joe shrugged. Steven, ever the eager young man ready to tackle the word, opted to give it the old college try.

Steven saddled up to that bottle of coke much like a young Arthur trying to pull the sword from the stone. Unfortunately, unlike Arthur, things didn't work out for him. Oh, he got the knife out, but much more with it. Imagine that, for a moment, when Arthur pulls the sword out, that the very rock that held it shattered into a million fiery pieces because of the sheer magnitude of what had just occurred. Now, replace "million fiery pieces" with "Coke" and you can guess what really happened. The moment that air was allowed into the savaged Coke bottle, it erupted with the anger of a thousand Mount Vesuvii. Once the coke dust cleared, Steven was left dripping with Coca Cola, and a Steven shaped outline on the wall was left, as the wall took the majority of the damage.

We spent the remainder of the day trying to clean it up, but unfortunately, there was no escaping the grounding that occurred. Alas, when Joe's dad came home, the ceilings were sticky, and Joe was punished. I'll always have that moment, though. The hissing sound of the air escaping, the brown flash in the air, and the Steven shaped outline on the wall as we finally got all the Coke we wanted.