Lord of the Five Rings

First published February 24, 2006

Hi. My name is Mike. I’m an Olympaholic.

Now I’m aware that some of you might be a little bit indifferent to the Winter Olympics that are just winding down right now in Turin, Italy. According to the NBC ratings, that would be about 99.8% of you.

But I just can’t help it. I’m hopelessly hooked on spending two weeks every four years fanatically watching people I’ve never heard of, doing things I won’t even remotely care about again for the next two hundred and six weeks.

I’m not really sure why.

It might be because I know I’m watching people who are the best in the world at whatever it is they are doing. You pretty much have to respect a guy who is the best in the world at flopping onto a coaster sled and hurtling head-first down a chute of solid ice at more than eighty miles per hour. Instead of psychological treatment, this guy gets a gold medal.

I guess I have a soft spot in my heart for these athletes partly because I had the good fortune to make it to the “elite” level in pairs water skiing, which is a sport a lot like pairs figure skating with less Russian mafia involvement.

Pairs water skiing is not an Olympic event, but my partners and I did get to compete in the very top tournaments, and we won our share of championships. Once, after skiing at Cypress Gardens and winning the Florida State tournament, a little girl even asked us for our autographs. It’s kind of fun to think that the photo we signed for her that day might at this moment be lying quietly in a drawer, waiting to be discovered by the woman grown from that little girl. She’ll pick it up, look at it and say, “Who the heck are these people?”

Anyway, I can actually relate when I watch ice skaters in spandex and sequins doing on the ice what my partners and I tried to do on the water – making hard, sweaty, dangerous tricks look smooth, easy, and beautiful.

So for the past two weeks I’ve been grabbing every available moment to watch athletic spectacles like “Curling,” where men or women wearing Dockers and golf shirts shove big round stones with handles on them down the ice and scream things like, “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep,” and “Huuuuuuuurrrrrrrryyyyy,” while other men or women in Dockers and golf shirts scoot right down the ice with the stones and scrub like crazy with little brooms.

I’ve been watching things like the “Biathlon,” where people race through the woods on cross-country skis until they can barely stand up, stopping now and then to take a few shots at a target with a rifle. I guess this is practice for the Nordic equivalent of road rage.

Please insert your favorite “Buckshot” Cheney joke here…

I’ve been watching people hit a jump and throw themselves forty feet straight up into the air on skis, spinning and flipping around like a gum wrapper in a tornado, then losing points because they bent their knees a little bit too much when they crashed back to the snow.

I’ve been watching long, muscular people in Spandex suits rocketing on skates around long, sleek tracks, and short, muscular people elbowing and crashing on skates around short, sleek tracks. I’ve watched people sail off a huge ramp on huge skis then turn their bodies into wings while they drop 20 stories to the snow, trying go a little further and make it 20.125 stories.

But I guess the Olympic athlete I really admire the most is the one who is the thirty-fifth best in the world at diving down that chute of ice, or flipping around like a gum wrapper, or rocketing around the track, or dropping 20 stories. This is the person who never had any chance at all of landing a Nike commercial, who goes out and competes anyway.

Think about it. Most of the people who finish way back in the pack in these sports have spent a major part of their lives getting good enough at whatever they do to make it to the Olympics. They left gallons of sweat in the gym, they made all the necessary sacrifices, and they took all the necessary risks, knowing that they would probably never wind up riding down main street, sitting on the back of a convertible and holding a medal up in the air.

They’ve gone for years knowing that if they tell a stranger, “I’m a Luger,” they are most likely to hear, “Um, I’m an Aquarius.” Now, after going to Italy and finishing 35th, they can say, “I’m an Olympian.”
Everybody should know what that means.

Copyright © 2006 Michael Ball

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The Dorky Dad Factor

First published February 10, 2006

Last week in this column we tackled the use of “blogs” by “Generation Y,” or “Generation Z” or “Generation Shrek” or whatever Generation it is that our kids belong to. I mentioned that they could use these blogs to get even with us for inflicting them with childhood torments like crunchy peanut butter, skim milk, and whole wheat bread.

I also pointed out that my son is apparently a leader in this movement with his blog, tenderly titled “My Dad Is A Dork” (believe me, it could have been a whole lot worse).

Well, I got a little feedback on that column:

Dear Mr. Funny Guy,

Why, I ought to rip your arm off and beat you with the bloody stump.

Then I ought to use it to illustrate the true meaning of the word, “dork.” According to wordorigins.org, popular etymology would have it that this American slang term comes from a word meaning a whale's penis. That is half right...

You no good commie.

Your Friend,

Leslie Merriam-Webster

Thanks for the information, Mr. Merriam-Webster. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon not know the other half of that definition.

Anyway, every kid who ever lived understands the modern meaning of the word “dork,” and we dads are proud to live up to the title. In fact, we actually belong to a secret society dedicated to the perpetual misery of our offspring.

Yes kids, when you were born, we all signed a contract, and agreed to adhere to a strict code of conduct. And now, at great risk to myself, I’ve decided to bend the rules on the Dorky Dad code of secrecy and share this document with you!

International Society of Fatherhood
Dedicated Dorky Dad Document

I, _________________, parent of __________________, do solemnly vow that I will humiliate my offspring every time I get the chance. I will achieve this goal by finding every way I can to be a certifiably uncool idiot, moron, doofus, fool, buffoon, clod, clown, and/or dork.

To accomplish this we will:

1. Dress in things your child would never wear. For example, an ensemble consisting of flip-flops, khaki Dockers, a purple Disney World T-Shirt and a green derby with “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” on it should pretty much guarantee deep and permanent emotional scarring.

2. Dress in things your child would be willing to wear. Sagging super-big pants (in my case, super super big) and a No Doubt T-shirt can be powerful trauma-inducing tools.

3. Don’t dress at all. Yikes.

4. Use pet names or otherwise show affection for your offspring in public. The word “Honey” used to address a fifteen-year-old boy is a guarantee of at least a decade of psychiatric treatment in the years to come.

5. Drive a "nerdmobile." This would be any car other than the one your kid's best friend's dad, who also owns a condo in Maui, drives.

6. Make it your business to know every item or brand name that kids think is desirable, then buy just the opposite. The ultimate insult would be to buy a teenager clothing or shoes from the dollar store with brand names like “Abercrumby” or “No Balance.”

7. Greet your daughter’s dates with lines like, “I collect guns and shovels. Guess which one I’ll use first if you bring my daughter home late?”

8. Attempt to learn about all the things that interest our offspring, then being sure to get it just a little bit wrong. For example, if they’re into extreme sports, tell all their friends that you really admire Tony Hawkeye.

9. Walk up to your child standing with a group of his or her friends and say something like, "What-up, Dawg?" Believe me, talking “street” will sound even dumber when you do it than it does when they do it.

I further attest and affirm that I will document any new developments in the field of fatherly dorkitude, and that I will share these developments with all other members of the International Society of Fatherhood.

Signed: ________________________________ Date: _________________

Witnessed: _____________________________ Date: _________________

So there you have it, kids. The secret of your father’s dorkiness is out. Just do me a favor and don’t tell anybody where you heard about it.


Copyright © 2006 Michael Ball

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One Good Blog Deserves Another

First published February 3, 2006

When I was a kid, my parents loved to humiliate me by hugging me in public, or to crush my dreams of glory by keeping me from sky-diving off the tool shed. Back then, the only way I had to get even with them was to wait until they weren’t looking, then drink directly out of the milk carton. If I was really mad I would eat cookies first – and backwash.

When I became a parent, I assumed that my son was working with the same set of options, so I just stayed away from the milk. And I’ve always figured that by the time the kid gets the chance to pick out which nursing home I’m going to end up in, his psychoanalyst will have taken some of the edge off the emotional trauma I inflicted by not buying him that dirt bike when he was in the third grade.

I never dreamed that I might get “blogged.”

For those of you who are not yet familiar with blogging, this is an activity in which a person publishes a personal diary or “log” on the Web – a “Web log.” If you repeat “web log” over and over with a mouth full of Tostitos, you get crap all over your keyboard.

You can write about that on your blog.

Blogging has opened up important new possibilities for the free interchange of critical information in our society. For instance, as I’m writing these words the blog management Web site “Blogger.com” lists 3,589,074 posts about cats. Yes, without her blog, Lindsey Applegate of Cincinnati, Ohio would have no way of sharing with the rest of us those vital photographs of little Sammy, Cocoa, Cassie, Stinky, and Zoro.

And there are many other topics diligently covered by bloggers throughout the world. Right now on Blogger.com there are:

674,050 posts about meat;

56,034 posts about toenails;

148,966 posts about stop signs;

17,344 posts about ear wax;

12,306 posts about scabs ;

10, 548 posts about boogers;

and 45 posts that deal with both scabs and boogers!

As you can see, the informative potential of blogs is almost limitless.

So you can imagine my excitement when I discovered an entire blog created by my son, dedicated to me. A tribute, I thought, to the years I spent nurturing his growth, developing his character, and keeping the credit cards handy.

And then I discovered the title and overall theme of his blog; it’s called “My Dad Is A Dork.”

Now, I’ve been told that I was a dork on a regular basis for a sizeable chunk of my adult life. In fact, as my son grew up I actively developed my own signature brand of dorkiness, elevating embarrassing the kid to something of a fine art. I drove a Volvo, wore flip-flops to the grocery store, sold the Volvo and bought a PT Cruiser, and on one occasion – in perhaps the crowning triumph of my dorkosity – called my son “Sweetie” in a hockey locker room.

So I guess I can live with having my achievements in dorkdom celebrated and commemorated online. It’s just a shame that he’s away at college now. Otherwise I’d start another blog of my own and call it, “My Kid Is Grounded.”

You can check out “My Dad Is A Dork” at http://learnedsofar.com/dork/.


Copyright © 2006 Michael Ball

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