Friday, September 07, 2018

In their first home game since winning the Super Bowl, the Philadelphia Eagles were booed when they were losing to the Falcons at the half. That is the harshest crowd reaction since Marie Antoinette recommended a bakery.





Detroit Tiger broadcasters, Rod Allen and Mario Impemba, are done for the season after getting in an altercation. Nobody was hurt, because, like the 57-83 Tigers, they could not hit anything either.







Since you asked:





Goodbye, Blueberry


When my daughter was ten, she lost her most treasured thing in the world, Blueberry, her light blue plush bunny. Blueberry had been with her every second of every night since she was a baby.

Blueberry smelled like Ann Caroline, which is to say he, or she, I was never sure which, smelled like love. (She, I just found out from my wife, Virginia, Blueberry was a she) 

Somehow, on a soccer trip to a tournament in San Bernardino, Blueberry got lost in our hotel. We checked the room 25 times, I went to the basement and checked the laundry room and all the dirty sheets, I asked the maid four times after enlisting a translator, I ran from the room to the car to the laundry room ten times until I was drenched in sweat.

We retraced each step we took the two days we were there. We retraced each step ten times. 

It wasn't just A.C.'s crying all the way home to San Diego that broke my heart, it was how desperately hard Ann Caroline was trying to be brave and stifle her crying. But the sobs came out anyway in bursts of choked gasps she simply could not swallow. Ann Caroline loved Blueberry with all of her heart. 

As a parent, I felt like an utter failure. You're supposed to be able to shield your child from that much sorrow at that young an age. Or so I thought. 

When we got home, we, her mother and I, had Ann Caroline write a goodbye letter to Blueberry. That night, Ann Caroline cried herself to sleep. Our yellow Labradors, Kasey and Wrigley, paced nervously wanting to comfort her, but they, like me, did not know what to do. 

Even my bad jokes did not work. A.C. would try to smile, but she just couldn't.  

Today my beautiful 20-year-old track star and Dean's List daughter cleaned out her room and took everything to college at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. 

When I sat alone in her empty room on her bed, suddenly I knew exactly how Ann Caroline felt when she lost Blueberry.