Sunday musings 6/15/14
Sunday musings…
1) World Cup. One of the few events in the sporting world that can make a golf tournament seem like an “edge of the seat” event by comparison.
2) Bikini. It’s that time of year. Ads, articles, blog posts, all with the hook “How to get a bikini body.” I think I’ve got this one.
In order to get a Bikini body, put on a Bikini. You now have a Bikini body. .
QED.
3) Triple Crown. Well, another year has come and gone and the winner of the first two jewels of the Triple Crown has once again failed to seal the deal. 30 or 40 some years since the last winner Affirmed. A certain segment of the racing crowd is now calling for changes in the format because it apparently is too hard, unfairly hard to win all three.
Sigh. So typical, eh?
If you are of a certain vintage and pay any attention to horse racing you doubtless remember that there was a similar hue and cry in the decades before Secretariat. Funny thing, though, after Secretariat came in rapid succession Seattle Slew and Affirmed, followed swiftly by cries that the Triple Crown was TOO EASY! No longer a significant achievement. Change was necessary to make it harder to achieve.
Equally typical.
At the end of the day there are certain benchmarks that exist for whatever reason, achievements which have some sort of historical relevance regardless of their age or the frequency with which they occur. The Triple Crown of horse racing. A Triple Crown in MLB. The sub-4:00 mile. Some of them have never been achieved. The Grand Slam in professional golf or tennis for example. The difficulty and rarity of the achievements are precisely what makes them special.
Those who seek to make it easier to reach these milestones are actually saying more about themselves than they are about the relative difficulty of making these particular grades. It’s all about them, what they think, how they feel. California Chrome was magnificent in the face of an injury that went unseen, his valor proven despite the fact that the racing world was denied a Triple Crown yet again. So close, in something so hard. Who would seek to cheapen such an effort?
Each time Mount Everest is re-measured it is found to have grown higher.
4) Father’s Day. What? You thought I’d let one of these slip by without a bit of musing? Don’t be silly.
I literally just put my Dad in a car and kissed him goodbye as Mrs. bingo drives him and my Mom (escorted by my brother and his wife) to the airport. In an upset family victory for the ages my Dad made the trip to Cleveburg for a visit that no one thought would occur. Hospitalized for the better part of 2013, a trip to the kitchen is a veritable cross-country foray for my Dad, and somehow everyone was able to pull it off. We were all able to spend a weekend in what is rather than dwell on what was and what’s coming.
I got to spend the weekend primarily as a son.
The other half of Father’s Day (and of course, Mother’s Day) is that the ticket to the game is a child. I’ve oft written that Father’s Day for me has always been a day when I’ve gifted myself with the privilege of being as much of a Dad as my kids could stand on that particular day. Father’s Day for me was never a day of repose, at least not when it came to anything “The Heir”, “Lovely Daughter”, and “Lil’bingo” might care to do with me.
This year my gift was to be able to revel in the act of being my Father’s son. I was able to share the simple joys of a nap in the sun, the discovery of a bush that had just flowered, and the fascination of what the wind can do to the surface of a large, shallow lake. We watched golf and hockey and soccer together, a running commentary coming from Dad like a Sports Center loop every 30 minutes, each one as identical as the TV talking heads on tape. While these are already just the faintest of shadows flickering on the farthest edges of my Dad’s mind, my brother and I will be forever blessed with memories of this weekend.
This Father’s Day weekend when we could still be our Father’s sons.
I’ll see you next week…
Posted by bingo at June 15, 2014 7:15 AM
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