Zen Dinosaurs

qzen42 feels

Memorial Day

A few things to ponder this Memorial Day weekend...

The essential act of love is acceptance.
The deepest act of love is forgiveness.
The kindest act of love is remembrance.

qzen42 feels

Woobies

It all started when Brie woke up last night. Often, it's just a diaper change and back to sleep she goes. Last night, I put her down in her crib.

Beat. Beat. Waaaa!

Pick her up. She drifts off.
Put her down. Beat. Beat. Waaaa!

Finally, it occurs to me: "Maybe it's something else, eh, Einstein?"

So I try giving her her Woobie as soon as I put her in the crib. She grabs it and hugs it to her chest. And drifts off.

So what is it about Woobies? When we are young, a security blanket does the trick. As we get older, I think the Woobie just changes shape and form. My 6yr old still likes a Woobie, too, except for him, it's a Woobie du Jour. One day, a plastic dinosaur,(incidentally, the Plastic Dinosaurs would be a great name for a rock band), the next, a plush gecko.

Then, when we hit adolescence, it becomes (these days) tattoos, and body piercings. Round about college, beer & our music. By adulthood, we let go of these childish things and grasp what's really important:

PDAs, cell phones, and SUVs.

What exactly is going on here? I think (and its probably documented) we progress from needing security (childhood) to a sense of control & identity (adolescence) to an expression of social status. But the expression often takes the form of objects rather than who we are and how we feel.

So, IMHO, we never really outgrow the Woobie. It just morphs. Oops. There goes my cell phone. It's a text message. The Plastic Dinosaurs are in town.

breathe.
evolve.
laugh.

qzen42 feels

T-Ball Rules

The title of this entry was not chosen lightly. T-Ball Rules is somewhat an intentional oxymoron. My son just played in his 1st T-ball game last Saturday. He did fine. He stopped a grounder @ short left field. He hit the ball out on his 1st try at bat.

When a ball was hit to him on the fly in right field he made the appropriate response...DUCK & COVER!!

T-ball is an interesting introduction to the sport of baseball. Mercifully, our neighborhood league is non-competitive. My son is lucky enough to be on a team where the coach is focused on fun, not competition. Coach Mike exhibits the kind of cool, calm patience necessary for a game where a percentage of the players are more fascinated with the FIELD than what's happening ON the field. Coach Mike is able to line batter after batter up @ the plate, sometimes several times with the same batter. Coach Mike remains calm when he watches the ball pass through the legs of three players. Coach Mike says "Great job!" if the throw from 2nd base winds up within the same zip code as 1st base.

Coaching a T-ball game, in my estimation, is a little like herding cats, or identifying cloud shapes. But one thing I did appreciate was the pure enthusiasm with which the kids play the game. Some are able to hit & throw quite well. Many of them remember to drop the bat when they run to 1st base. There are no free agents. No player strikes. Just pure enactment of an American institution.

When we asked our son whether he liked his 1st T-ball game or not, he said: "Oh, yes!"

"What did you like best about it?"

"I got to stand in the sand!!"

breathe.
evolve.
laugh.