My wife’s explaining to our boy how she managed to pass a driving test and get a license without ever taking a driving lesson: “I drove in Thailand and when I came over here I just took the test. I’m pretty charming. People like happy, smiling people. And when I was young, I was cute. The examiner just said, ‘okayokayokay.’ I hate to say it, but when you’re good looking, you get the benefit.” Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Kids
Airline Safety
As we’re waiting for the plane to leave the gate, my son’s looking over the airline safety brochure, which shows multiple scenarios of people sliding to safety out of a downed plane — onto grass, into water, etc. He says, “None of these things is going to work if the plane is going–” here he makes a plummeting motion with his hand, along with a plummeting sound effect. “The plane is on the ground in those pictures,” I say. “You’re not supposed to slide out of the plane while it’s still in the air.” “I know. I’m saying there’s no solution if the plane actually crashes.” “That’s right. Do you want to get off?” Read more →
A Long Story About a Chair
Our hotel room has a bedroom, where I sleep, and a living area with a pull-out sofa where my son sleeps. Between the rooms is a door that I close at night when I go to bed. I got up this morning, opened the door and almost fell over a desk chair that shouldn’t have been there. “Why’s this chair set up here like a barricade?” I asked my son. “It’s a long story,” he said. “Really? What’s the story?” “We were talking in the lobby last night and Ian got in trouble with his dad for being out of the room so late. Chris couldn’t sleep in his room because his mom and dad had some guests come by so he was going to sleep in Ian’s room but then he didn’t want to because Ian was in trouble so he came in here. He was going to sleep… Read more →
NARCh – Day 4
The Devil Dogs would have liked to be playing today but weren’t after last night’s 2-1 quarterfinal defeat to the Cougars. In the semifinals, the #5 seed Cougars got smoked 6-1 by the #2 seed Detroit Mission Stars 92, while the #1 seed Adrenaline, another Michigan team, beat the #6 seed ISCA Grizzlies from New Jersey 10-4. In the final, the Stars beat Adrenaline 5-2 to win the gold medal. As the highest-seeded semifinal loser, the Cougars earned the bronze medal. Everyone who’s played a sport for a while has been on the wrong end of last-minute losses. If you can’t take the occasional tough loss, you always have the option of not playing the sport. But I have to admit that the coaching decisions at the end of last night’s game are going to haunt me for a while. Putting the wrong team on the rink in the… Read more →
NARCh – Day 3
Quarterfinals: The Devil Dogs led 1-0 most of the game, but gave up two goals in the last minute to lose 2-1. They’re out of the tournament. My son was crying after the game when he came out of the locker room — not weeping, but he had tears in his eyes. Don’t tell him I told you. He never cries after games. I was this close to crying myself when I saw him. I’m now going to violate my policy of never questioning coaches’ decisions. Hockey’s a team game, but if I’m going to lose a game in the last minute, I’m going to lose it with my strongest players on the rink. I was looking out there with a minute left and a 1-0 lead and I couldn’t see how having the two biggest, fastest kids on the bench gave the team the best chance to win that… Read more →
Seedings
Seedings are up for single-elimination. Devil Dogs seeded #4 and will play the #5 seed New Jersey Cougars tonight. Cougars were undefeated in round-robin — two wins and two ties. The ties were strange: they tied the #2 seed Detroit Mission Stars 92, but they also tied a not-so-good California team that got knocked out in round-robin . . . Read more →
Postgame
“What did the coach say to you guys after the game?” I ask my son. Long pause. “I can’t remember,” he says. “But I absorbed it.” Read more →
NARCh – Day 2
The Devil Dogs beat the Revision RBK Buffalo Wings Black 4-0 in the morning game. That clinched them a spot in the single-elimination round, which starts tomorrow. In the night game, they lost to the Detroit Mission Stars 92, 4-2. The Stars were also undefeated coming in, and by winning the game, will get a better seed than the Devil Dogs in single-elimination. A little background on age divisions in roller hockey: The Devil Dogs play in the Bantam division. You could think of it as a 16-and-under division but in roller hockey, the season runs almost year-round and the divisions are actually based on birth year. This year’s Bantam division, for example, includes kids born in 1992 or later. Most Bantam players are 92s (born in 1992) or 93s (born in 1993) because 94s and younger can play a division lower in the PeeWee division. When a team… Read more →
Twitter: 2009-07-10
The hotel we're staying at just opened. About to get a baptism of fire hosting a full house of junior hockey players… # Read more →
A Cool Thing I Learned About Canada
There’s a picture of kids playing hockey on the back of the 5-dollar bill: Read more →
NARCh – Day 1
The Devil Dogs played their first two round-robin games today. In the afternoon game, they beat the Motor City Moose from Detroit, 5-3. Devil Dogs scored the first three goals, but the Moose came back to 4-3 down before the Dogs scored a late goal for the final margin. After the game, we came back to the hotel, barbequed some burgers and hot dogs, then drove back to the arena for a 9 p.m. game against the Mission Mayhem, a local team from here in Ontario. Devil Dogs won, 3-2. My son had a nice goal. A teammate tried to saucer a pass to him as he skated to the front of the net, but the pass stayed airborne all the way. He took a short baseball swing at it and batted it in out of the air. When an NHL player does that, it’s a definite SportsCenter Top 10,… Read more →
Team Bonding and an Amazing Coincidence
Yesterday’s team bonding activities included miniature golf, pizza and a midnight screening of Brüno, all within walking distance of the hotel. After the movie, the kids walked to McDonalds. It was closed. The drive-thru was still open, but they didn’t have a car. Just then — in an amazing cross-continental coincidence — Eddie, the manager of our local rink in Irvine, pulled into the drive-thru, and the kids got him to buy them all ice cream cones . . . Read more →
A Partly Eaten Cobb Salad from IHOP
As I get home from work, my wife greets me with what looks like a leftover, partly eaten Cobb salad . . . “We went to IHOP,” she says, “and we got this for you.” “Oh, thanks,” I say. “Thanks for thinking of me.” Later in the evening I catch up with my son and ask him what he had to eat at IHOP. “I had a steak omelet and pancakes,” he says. “That sounds really good. I wanted to thank you for treating me to the half-eaten Cobb salad.” “Mom said you’d like that,” he says. “And that was pretty much a whole Cobb salad.” “It looked partly eaten to me.” “The bacon was partly eaten.” “That’s the best part of the salad.” Read more →
Team A vs. Team B
My son and I are leaving Wednesday night for Toronto where his 16-and-under team, the Devil Dogs, is playing in the NARCh roller hockey tournament. Do the Dogs have a chance to contend? Short answer: I don’t know. That’s why they play the games. Longer answer: They’re in a round-robin bracket with teams from New York, Canada and two teams from Michigan. If you get through the round-robin games and into the single-elimination rounds, anything can happen. Let’s say Team A is good enough to beat Team B 9 games out of 10, or even 99 games out of 100. There’s still that one game that Team B wins, and in single elimination, that’s all you need. Whether that’s good news or bad news depends on whether you’re Team A or Team B. Read more →
Mysterious Ways
We got this email from my son’s indoctrination camp (grammatical errors included): It is my unfortunate duty to inform you that we have a confirmed case of the H1N1 virus . . . We understand that there a considerable number of students and staff who became ill on the last day of camp or just after returning home. . . . While getting people sick is not something we want and definitely not something we like, the riches of Christ being shared at camp far outweighs the risk of illness and that we’re praying for all those who are affected that they will be well soon. God moves in mysterious ways. Like why didn’t He send the swine flu to the Atheist Kids camp? And I don’t let the camp staff off the hook. Why didn’t they pray before the camp that no one would get swine flu instead of… Read more →
The Thin Man
“The doctor said I’m really skinny,” my son says. “I’m in the 75th percentile for weight but I’m in the 94th percentile for height.” “That’s not a really big difference,” I say. “She said I could be 6-foot-4 by the time I’m 20.” “I’d like to be 6-foot-4.” “I wouldn’t,” he says. “I’m going to stand out everywhere.” “I’m 6 feet, maybe a little over, and I’m taller than most people, but if I was 6-foot-4, I’d be definitively taller than most people.” “Exactly,” he says. “I’ll be a freak.” “6-foot-4 isn’t a freak. Girls love tall guys.” “I’ll be an outcast giant.” Read more →
Lost or Not Found
My son can’t find his cell phone . . . “You should glue it to your hand,” I say, “since you lose it at least once a day.” “No, I don’t,” he says. “Once a week, then.” “Okay, but I never lose it. I just can’t find it at the time I need it.” Read more →
Team Player
“Mom, can you drop me off at the park for basketball?” “Not now, honey, I’m on a business call.” “People are waiting for me! YOU’RE KILLING MY TEAM!” Read more →
Greatest Tweet Ever
I say to my ex: “How can you ask if he’s your kid? You can count backward from his birth to one of the two times in six years we had sex.” — Penelope Trunk Read more →
The Triumph of My Pedagogical Method
Northwood High School grades came out today. My son got A’s in all of his classes. He won’t know that himself until Saturday night because he’s currently incommunicado at Children of the Corn camp, but the honors classes at Northwood are anything but a slam-dunk A, even for the best students, so we’re very proud of him. He’s become a lot better at managing his time and plotting out academic strategies, down to the level of selecting the right background music for study sessions. He’s still not as proactive with his teachers as I’d like him to be, but behavioral modification takes time. You can offer ideas, but until an idea and the kid’s readiness for the idea converge, nothing happens. Years may go by. For example, he just recently started setting up more study groups with his friends, a mere four years after I first mentioned to him that… Read more →