Conceding the Gap

It’s interesting how the generation gap makes itself evident every once in a while.

Sometimes it’s even kind of awkward.

One evening after work last week, I was unwinding with a drink, my iPad, and a Bluetooth speaker on the back deck by the pool. I have tons of old music loaded on a media server that sits in the living room, but no matter how much music I add, I never seem to find the music I am in the mood for at a given moment. I never really know what I'm in the mood to hear until I hear it.

Such was the case this evening.

So I switched the setting of my app to simply play random selections in “shuffle mode”.

One song comes up from a live Bruce Springsteen concert album. You can hear the cheers and crowd noise in the background and then the base guitar kicks in hard with a familiar repeating riff interrupted by the smash of drum and cymbals  between each. And then the Boss starts in …

I’m driving in my car …

I turn on the radio …

I start pulling you closer …

At that point my youngest daughter Ashley-Rae comes out, bored from a summer day with nothing to do, and sits down beside me.

“Ash, this is a great great tune … listen …” I said to my fifteen year old who thinks music before 2012 is too old to be bothered with.

I hit the double arrow icon on the tablet to start the song over. The crowd noise rises again as it did before, and Ashley-Rae sits patiently to humor me.

I’m driving in my car …

I turn on the radio …

I start pulling you closer …

But you just say No ….

You say you don’t like it …

But I know you’re a liar …

Because when we kiss … ohhhh …

Fire …

“Dad, is this song about rape?” asks Ashley-Rae.

“Huh? What? No …. No no no”, I stammer … shocked at this twist, not sure if she’s teasing me or seriously asking. “No this about when a man … you know … and he thinks the girl is playing hard to .. you know …”

And I stopped.

“Dad, no means no”.

“Uh yeah – yes it absolutely does … “ remembering my audience is my very pretty fifteen year old daughter that I am very proud to hear say this back to me.

“So is this song about rape?”

At that moment the neighbor lady across the corner came to the back gate announcing her arrival with “Hellloooo?”

Perfect timing. I jumped up and hurried my way to the arbor gate and let her in. She was asking to borrow a garden tool. I found it surprisingly quickly in the shed and as I was handing it to her I asked “Hey do you remember an old Springsteen song … “I’m driving in my car …”

“I turn on the radio …” she continued and she sang the next two lines as she did a little dance.

“Ashley-Rae just asked me if that song is about rape …”

The nice neighbor lady looked up at me surprised. “huh?” and she started to sing the next lines … “ohhh … gee … I don’t know … it’s such a great song … how do you handle that?”

At that moment that I realized that whether or not we thought it was a great song or not didn’t matter.

“ASH” I yelled, hoping she was still outside.

“Oh hi miss Melinda”, she said as she appeared around the corner.

“I asked miss Melinda, and she agreed that the song is about rape”, I said and the nice neighbor lady played along by nodding, accepting her new stance, understanding why.

“Okay” said Ash as she spun back around to go back in the house. “Too bad though, it’s a pretty good song”.

Peddling Papers

Remembrance Day has come and gone again.

My Dad’s birthday was November 11th or Remembrance Day here in Canada. Everyone here dons a red poppy pinned to their lapel to remember our fallen soldiers.

When I was a little boy, I always felt bad for Dad having a birthday on Remembrance Day – because everyone would be remembering other people and nobody would remember his birthday.

Birthdays are important when you’re a little boy.

But since Dad passed away some 22 years ago, I spend a good portion of that day simply remembering my Dad.

My Dad had some really great sayings.

When he would greet us in the morning he would ask “How’s your belly for spots?” instead of “How are you?”

When someone would offer Dad something he would smile wide and say “We take all free gifts”.

When he would find my brother and I to be a bit to rambunctious, he would tell us to “go peddle your papers” or “go play in traffic”.

But my favorite expression was used anytime that my brother and I and Dad would know that we were in trouble with our Mom.

Before Paul and I could even conger up any feasible resemblance of an excuse or alibi, Dad would simply smile at and almost with a wink he would say to us

“You lie and I’ll swear to it”.

This year I was thinking about all the technology that has evolved over the last 22 years. I was thinking about how it was too bad that Dad didn’t get to experience how personal computers would have revolutionized how he did his job as the Manager of Southern Region for Business Products Sales for the 3M Company.

He likely would have fought it.

Dad would spend hours working on the visuals – the transparencies that he laid on top of the lighted screen of the overhead projectors he sold to schools and businesses as he prepared to give presentations to very large audiences.

Of course, programs like Microsoft’s PowerPoint would have made this task a breeze – although Dad was very much a person to pay attention to detail.

Spreadsheets and word processors would have greatly helped both my Dad and my Mom – who appointed herself as Dad’s private secretary.

They were a great team.

But Dad got very sick in 1983. He was forced into an early retirement just a year or so before the very first IBM PCs came onto the market. Dad passed away in 1990 a couple years before the Internet came along in such a way that the public could access it.

Dad never saw e-mail, or instant messaging. He never saw a web page like this one. He never would have dreamed of things like Skype or Facebook or Twitter or YouTube.

Or the iPhone.

In retrospect – much of what the personal computer came to be replaced what the very business products my Dad’s teams sold.

Except Post-It notes.

Sad, Dad never saw the 3M Post-It notes. And the computer never really found a way to replace them.

And Dad never saw any of the professional social networking sites like LinkedIn.

My Dad often told the story of being hired by Blue Cross Blue Shield in Michigan – about how when asked what University he went to, he replied “Why the University of Western Ontario”. When challenged by whoever he told the story to, he would rebut, “I most certainly did go to Western, every Thursday … to sell Encyclopedia Britannica”.

And Dad would laugh.

I like to tell that story on behalf of my Dad now. But that was then – before the Internet - before Google – before being able to validate such facts nearly instantaneously online.

I don’t think my Dad would have tried to pull that kind of stunt today.

It’s funny though, because most people I know have their professional credentials on LinkedIn. Their whole resume is on their profile; their education, their certifications, their acquired skills, and their employment history.

It’s all there.

IT people are funny when it comes to listing their skills on a resume. It’s as though they list every technology they ever heard of as a skill they have acquired. There seems to be no regard as to what they will do should they get hired to work with that technology they know by name only.

And now, others can attest to your mastering the skill. They simply click on the skill link in your list of skills and select Endorse.

That person does not have to prove that they know that you know that skill. But with a mere click of a mouse such a claim becomes a verified fact.

Or as my Dad would have said, “You lie and I’ll swear to it!”

My Baseball Dad

Baseball is a big deal at our house.

It has been since I was a little boy.

No matter where we were going, the ball equipment always sat in the trunk of our car – at the ready – should we pass an empty ball diamond along the way. And if we did, the car pulled over to the side, the equipment bag came out of the trunk, and we would hold a quick infield practice.

That’s just how my Dad was.

He was an excellent coach – and his forte was teaching technique. Acquire the basic skill, and then master the technique.

The one break-through day I clearly remember was when Dad taught me how to charge a hard hit ground ball so that you catch it just as it hit the ground – taking the ball just as it came up – eliminating for the most part the possibility of the ball taking a bad bounce and going by you.

That advice really worked.

That was when I was eleven years old.

Up until then, I would simply sit back on the ground ball and snag it as it came by – most often with success – but that waiting time both allowed the runner to move further up first baseline meaning he would beat my throw more often.

After I learned that technique of Dad’s and mastered it as an eleven year old, I made the all star team at short stop or second base every year after. It made such a huge difference.

I see a lot of coaches teaching the principle of charging the ball these days, but they seem to forget the point of taking the ball on the short hop.

He also spent a lot of time teaching us the individual techniques of hitting, all those little things like the proper stance – spending hours positioning us at the plate – and how the timing of shifting your weight from your back foot to your front foot so that your bat strikes the ball at the exact moment your weight shifts – allowing you to hit the ball hard with your weight rather than with your arms – and how to snap your wrists right at the point of contact to optimize your leverage and transferring twice the power of your weight into the ball. All these individual points of technique that when put together with keeping your eye on the ball and being able to tell a strike from a ball as it leaves the pitchers hand – add up into one beautiful swing that hits line drives over the infield and perhaps over the outfield every time.

That was my Dad. He knew baseball. He coached baseball. And he coached coaches how to teach these advanced fundamentals.

But nothing really clicked for me until I turned eleven – when my muscle and hand-eye coordination started to really allow me to apply these techniques. Until then, I never really felt like I had control – control of the ball as I threw it like my Dad taught me – control of the heavy bat as I tried to move it through the plane of the swing – control of my feet and my body as I went back for a long fly ball looking over my shoulder and watching it all the way into the webbing of my glove.

At age eleven – I gained the coordination of the muscles in my body to do what I was thinking – and what I was thinking came all that training.

Now I am a Dad. Not nearly as good a Dad as my Dad when it comes to baseball – or softball – as Alannah and Ashley-Rae are nine and ten years old. But I am trying.

But next year, Alannah turns eleven. And I am hoping her muscle coordination “kicks in”.

Friday Night – the Turtle Club team they play for was facing Windsor West – at Mic Mac Park – under the lights for the first time ever. And the girls were excited – and the Windsor West team was a good team with decent pitching.

Alannah hit a line drive right to the girl playing short stop – who caught it. Later – with girls on second and third hit another line drive up the middle and scored two runs. As well, Ashley-Rae ran out a close play at first to be called safe.

Later, Alannah in right field (all players rotate positions each inning to be fair to all) – a hard line drive was hit up the first base line – just inside the bag – a fair ball – and Alannah took off to chase it down. As she reached the ball the runner was turning first and heading full speed for second – and Alannah picked that ball up with her bare hand and threw it on a rope to the second baseman Danielle – hitting her glove perfect as the base runner ran into her glove for an out.

It was great.

Our Turtle Club team lost that match 9-10. But it didn’t matter.

There are signs that both are on the verge of their coordination “kicking in”.

Dad would be so excited.

And now, just starting right now, we can start to carry that equipment bag in the car, and stop and hit ground balls and take batting practice and work on all of these techniques my Dad taught me.

At least that’s what I hope will happen. Like I said earlier, I’m not as good a Dad as my Dad was. And it’s harder with our schedules now to find the time to just have fun anymore.

I can’t find any time to play golf – but maybe baseball will be different.

That all being said – my Dad could be a tough coach – insisting that you try – and repeating the same things over and over again each time he slammed a ground ball …

“Get up on balls of your feet and off your heels”

“Keep your head down on the ball … it won’t hurt you”

“Charge that ball harder and keep that glove down”

And sometimes my brother Paul and I would get plain frustrated – and we would say mean things to him. And sometimes we quit.

But Dad always inspired us to get back out there and try even harder.

I don’t know how all that repetition and frustration will play out with Alannah and Ashley-Rae – but we will see. They’re good girls and they really do love softball and want to learn more … but they both get frustrated very easily. And they cry … girls cry. I don’t remember me and Paul crying playing ball. Maybe we did.

But Dad was patient. More patient than I think I am.

I’m not as good a Dad as my Dad was, you see.