Turns Out Cheer Season And Duck Season Aren't As Similar As One Might Think

 

Libby is in the thick of cheer season, with basketball games at school and regional competitions with her competitive squad nearly every weekend.

You would not believe the people who go to these things. They are all, um, enthusiastic, and involved, and LOUD and there are a LOT of them. They participate, man, and cheer for their cheerleaders.

 

My views on cheerleaders at sporting events are pretty well known, at least among the half dozen people who read this blog, but I’m all for these competitive teams. The girls – mostly girls, there are some boys – are in pretty good shape and do some impressive stunts.

 

For example, look at how high these flyers are. The ugly backdrop makes it hard to see them, but they are way up there.

 

Libby is very good and getting better. I’m proud of her. She doesn’t know it, but with her hair done up for cheer, with the big bows, I think she looks like Julie Newmar.

 

Competitions are long and exhausting for parents, but rewarding. The music is awful. And loud.

 

As Kelly says, “the bigger the cheer bow, the better the cheer mom.”

What's It Take To Frost Your Pumpkin?

 

The temperature dropped to the mid-30s last night, with frost this morning. That’s a bit unusual for us this early in the year, and you should have heard the whining: “It was so cold.” “I had to turn on the heat.” “I got out my winter clothes.” “I’m freezing.”

 

Right now, it is 56 degrees (F), and people are still complaining. We have a football game later, where the temperature will likely be in the mid-40s by the time we leave. I am laying out clothes with lots of layers, and trying to decide whether to dig out my long johns.

Which seems pretty normal.

But late last January, we had a day where the temperature was in the mid-30s at night and upper 50s in the sunny afternoon. Everyone was so happy. “Oh, it’s so warm out.” “Mom, why can’t I wear shorts to school?” “It’s like spring.” “I wish the pool was open.”

Same temperatures, 180-degree opposite reactions. So what’s the difference?

Give Me A President Who Makes A Difference Where I Live: Part 1

Apparently there is going to be yet another presidential election this year. I started voting when  Carter beat Ford for the Oval Office, and while there have been men I have and desperately have not wanted as president, generally speaking POTUS makes little difference in what I do day-to-day. Real power for change or influence in America is in the Congress, so whether we have a Republican or a Democrat president is largely irrelevant.

Rather than all this yap yap yap about things presidents can’t control – jobs, the economy, Chick-Fil-A – I’d vote for a candidate who will make a stand on real issues that we all face every day, things that really matter, things that would make our daily lives much easier, much more satisfying.

Issue 1: Men Without Shirts

Even if we all looked more like this guy than John Candy, it's still gross.

There are no public situations where we should see a man without a shirt. The same laws that discourage women from walking around without shirts should apply to men. Why men think they can and should mow the lawn or play tennis  or drive around or sit around outside bare chested is beyond me. I won’t play shirts and skins basketball, because not only do you see sweaty men without shirts, they brush their hairy backs and greasy bellies against you, and it is sickening. There ought to be a law against it, with a president willing to enforce it.

Issue 2: Cheerleaders At Sporting Events

Down by 40 with two minutes to play, the girls with the too-short-skirts start chanting something about “we’re number one and we can’t be beat.” Or waiting for the first free throw of a two-shot foul, they go into their rebound, rebound routine. Learn the game, girls, pay attention. Those chants? What could be more ridiculous. Oh, yeah, spirit fingers. Cheerleaders are just in the way, a distraction, but not a good kind of distraction. Let them compete against other cheer teams all they want, or let them pole dance, which is the next logical step, just keep them away from the field, off the court and out of the stands. The games are good enough on their own.

Issue 3: Cell Phones In Movie Theaters

It was bad enough being dragged to the midnight premier of that vampire movie where people turn into big dogs, but having dozens of phone lights swirling around like 30-pound lightning bugs throughout the show was enough to make me wish I had a paint ball gun handy.  Phones in the theater ought to be like jumping onto the baseball diamond during a game – a large fine and a guaranteed night in jail. It would be easy to enforce. The offenders are the ones with the front half of their faces lit up.

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While waiting for Part 2, drop me a note. What real-life changes would like to see?

Cheer Day (Another !&*%$@! Cheer Day)

It is cheer day.

One of our daughters cheers for her school, but also participates on a competitive cheer team. Today is the first competition of her season, which means we are in a distant, large city, preparing to spend long hours in some cavernous convention center, surrounded by hundreds of teenaged and pre-teen girls with cheerleader attitude and not enough clothes, dancing to mindless, too loud (c)rap music.

Oh boy.

At least, I console myself, it’s not Cotton-Eyed Joe. My older children were clog dancers, and their competitions featured that inane song as loud as it could go, every team, every age division, over and over and over. The four of them were dedicated, so they practiced every day at home, where I heard Cotton Eyed Joe over and over and over.

I was an invisible nerd in high school, in the days before being a nerd was cool or socially credible in any way, so I had no experience with cheerleaders other than secretly admiring their legs from a distance. Certainly none ever spoke to me, and I likely would have passed out had one stooped so low.

So it is interesting to live with one now, and to have her friends around, to see the pretty girls up close and personal. They still have the attitude, and few of them talk to me, but from my perspective, it is a relief to realize that the snotty girls weren’t that different after all, that they had their fears and worries and jealousies and doubts, too.

Could it be that Janet and Jane and Lee Ann and Kathy and the rest were more like me than I thought? That they hid their insecurities behind upturned noses and school colors, rather than standing silently in the back?

Or is that just wishful thinking from a high school cipher?