A Tale of True Heroism

I've been childless for something like three weeks now. At the beginning of June, on my daughter's last day of school, we took them up to Marietta, OH and met my mother-in-law there for dinner (at the Marietta Brewing Company, by the way) where she took the kids and we headed back down the road to North By God Carolina. Mother-in-law and children went north and west, ending up in South Bend eventually, where they hung out for a couple of weeks. While there, my children had some swimming lessons where my daughter (who will be six on Friday) learned how to swim underwater, without floatation devices, how to dive, all that good stuff. My son, who will be three in July, learned how to not be afraid of the water. I suspect he was easily coaxed into the water by Miss Abby, his swim instructor.

Anyway, for the past few days, my children have been in Oklahoma, visiting their great-grandparents (my wife's grandparents through her mom's side). The great-grandparents have a pool, which is one of the main reasons why the kids went through swim lessons, so that they could swim safely in the pool.

This sets the scene. And now for the action.

I came home on Friday and sat in my chair, and my wife came over and sat near me. If you've ever seen Knute Rockne: All American (and if you haven't, I only ask, why haven't you subjected yourself to this fine piece of American film???) there's a scene at the end where Knute's wife has a chill about the same time that Knute's plane goes down in a Kansas farmer's field. That's kind of the look my wife had as she approached me. She worried that the little boy would fall into the pool and no one would know and then we'd have no more little boy. I told my wife not to worry as our daughter would watch over him, and she asked what she could do, and I told her that she could scream for help.

I think you see where this is going. But I'll finish the story.

We call the kids later that night, and my wife talks to my daughter and nothing big happens. Then she talks to the little boy and he says "Sissy saved me." To which my wife responded "What?" And he follows up with "My life. Sissy saved my life."

At this point, my wife says, "That's nice honey...could you please put Grandmommy on the phone?"

My mother-in-law quickly starts to explain.

Apparently, after dinner, people weren't really paying attention to the little boy and he decided he wanted to go swimming, so he just walked down the steps and into the pool. Without floatation devices. A few seconds later, my mother-in-law hears my daughter yelling "Grandmommy, help me. I need help. Help me." My mother-in-law looks over and sees my daughter in the pool with my son. She has her arm wrapped around her chest and is holding his head above water so that he can breathe, and she is back kicking toward the side so that they can get out.

Well.

The only thing I could take from this was that I could tell my wife that I was right. Fortunately, my daughter was more proactive than just yelling for help. She apparently dove in, went underwater to get him, and dragged him back to the side like a lifeguard. I don't know if she was taught this during her swim classes or not, or if she just acted on instinct alone. Either way, it was pretty fucking amazing for a five-year-old to do. I'm guessing not a lot of twenty-five year olds would do that.

If it seems like I'm bragging, you're damned right I am. This is one of those things that I felt I should write down, lest my memory fail me later in life. Also, my daughter will someday be able to read AND work the internet (she does both now, but not together), and I don't want her to think that her father is just some fat, drunken lout who tries to poison his lab mates with toxic gas and has issues with HR and uses the F-word way too much. I mean, she knows that anyway. This way she can know that I really do pay attention and can be proud of her. Plus, this is another way of reminding my son that he owes his life to his sister, and being a Catholic family, you can bet this will come up time and time again as both children age.

All comments relating to Pamela Anderson and slow-running will result in a healthy ass-kicking from a father who is already a tad overprotective. You've been warned. Punk.

Good-bye, Hep

I've never made it anything but abundantly clear that I'm a Notre Dame football fan. I've often referenced the strange phenomenon that happens in northern Indiana every fall, when people turn their Notre Dame football sweatshirts inside out and they magically become Indiana basketball shirts. I'm guilty of this, as well. I attended Notre Dame for graduate school, but I was a lifelong Indiana fan. As such, I've followed both schools major sports pretty faithfully over the years, including the "off sports" for each institute, which would be Notre Dame's basketball and Indiana's football programs.

Well, today, Indiana's football program took a serious shot to the stomach.

Terry Hoeppner, the head football coach at Indiana, died of complications due to tumors in his brain this morning. He was 59.

Indiana used to have some pride in its football program, back in the Bill Mallory days. Then came a time when it seemed everything went to basketball. When IU hired Hoeppner away from Miami (OH), it seemed that they were ready to shake the dust off a program that had grown stagnant over the years. He was exactly the kind of man that IU needed as a head coach: charismatic, outgoing, exciting, and loved Indiana football. Indeed, this past season, IU was tantalizingly close to a bowl game, which would have been its first since the Eisenhower administration (actually...I think it was since 1993). Interest in Indiana football had suddenly become posh once more in the southern part of the state, and season ticket sales were on the rise, among alumni, students and the general public. Higher level recruits were actually answering the phone when IU called. Changes to the facilities and to the stadium were planned and underway. A lot of this was thanks to Hep's energy and charisma. IU might not have become an overnight powerhouse, but it was taking the necessary steps toward shuffling off the doormat moniker that has plagued it in recent years.

And now, IU nation has taken a shot to the gut. The recruits and players are all, understandably, dazed, as the people around the program are, too. I do suspect, especially with the naming of Bill Lynch (I believe that's his name) as the interim head coach this past weekend, that AD Rick Greenspan and others expected this to happen--perhaps not so soon, but they probably expected it to happen. Whether expected or not, it's a sad day for IU nation, and my heart goes out to them.

Here's hoping for a good season to remember Coach Hoeppner, who began to lay the foundation for improving the overall standing of the football program. My condolences to the Hoeppner family and to the team who grew to love their charismatic coach. You were a good one, Hep, and you'll be missed.

A Modest Proposal

A few months ago (probably at the beginning of the year, being that is the resolution time and all) my company offered this special discount with Weight Watchers. We still had to pay an inane amount of money to join, and the WW food wasn't discounted or anything, but we could pull out the payments from our paycheck so that we were losing weight tax free!!! And there was much rejoicing.

The response was...luke warm at best, I'd say. We got several emails from HR demanding asking people to join. Naturally, all of the people who don't need to do Weight Watchers joined. It was around this time that HR put pressure on one of my associates to get ME to join the program. This really pissed me off. Not because I'm not a fatass (I'll admit to being one readily), but just the gall of someone to think they can pressure a person into doing something they don't want to do just because they're in the front of the building...well, I shan't start on HR people. At my old job, the HR idiots directors were sneaking, conniving, evil people. Here, they just call you fat and pressure you into losing weight.

I realize that having a not-overweight workforce is something that companies see as leading to lower insurance costs. I won't deny the logic here. People who aren't grossly overweight make better, healthier, more productive workers. What I'm still pissed about is the notion that the HR woman felt the need to pressure me through another person in the company (this person had already signed up for the program).

The thing that pisses me off, though, aside from HR's antics and all the people who don't need to lose eight joining and that we still have to pay for food, meetings, blah blah blah is the really pathetic notion that people feel they need to have a group supporting them in order to lose weight. It's one thing to be supported by your spouse, especially if he/she does the shopping. It's entirely different to sit around a powwow once or twice a week telling everyone what you forcibly allowed to slither down your throat. Well, here's some news for you, folks: you ain't gonna lose weight unless you want to lose weight. The group means dick when it comes to weight loss, unless the group is going to show up at your house and slap the brownie away from your mouth upon its final approach. If you don't have the willpower to stop licking the cream from between Little Debbie's cookies and shoving ho-hos in your Twinkie hole, you probably should just end it now. Quick tip for you: the best way to lose ten pounds of ugly fat is to just cut off your head.

One other thing that pisses me off, and then I'll get to my point. I'm tempted to go on the Subway diet. Real tempted, except I'm not fooled by Senor Fatass Jared. I hate to tell people who buy into this whole notion that white bread and mayonnaise sammiches ain't the solution to your weight problem. What Subway neglects to tell you is that Senor Fatass walked/jogged for three hours a day in the park beside the optometry school at Indiana. I know this because my best friend went to optometry school at Indiana. So, it wasn't the highly processed carbohydrate-laden buns nor the processed fat-laden mayonnaise on those sammiches which caused Jared to shed the poundage, it was exercise. Gasp! A novel fucking concept.

Now, on the other hand, my wife has a friend/manager who received for Christmas a Nintendo Wii. Since Santa placed this sinful bunch of silicon wafers and circuits under the tree, Ms. Manager has lost 20-25 pounds. I'm willing to bet the last few ounces of Dr. Pepper in my bottle that most, if not all, of the Weight Watchers people did not lose that much weight. Wow. That almost sounds like--gasp! again--exercise! What a concept!

So, here's my proposal the next time HR feels the need to shake the fat tree that I've shinnied up: subsidize my Wii and allow me to buy games tax free. I mean, if I can lose 25 pounds in six months, isn't that getting me to the same goal as the Weight Watchers crowd? I believe it is. Oh, and it's a helluva lot more fun than eating white bread sammiches, counting points, and waiting for the approval of "the group".

So...what do you say, HR? First one to -50 lbs wins?