I am writing from my daughter's first middle school track meet. It's 75 degrees and sunny and hardly any wind...a perfect day for a track meet. It's the first meet she is in, and she is running the 1600 meter and then an hour or two later the 800 meter. That's a lot of running for her first meet. Saturday I went over to the track with her and I walked while she ran. At one point I decided to run with her after she had run 4-5 laps, and she took off. I ran about a half a lap with her and then I was done...I don't know if it was fat old me, or young fast her, but it made me feel a lot better about how she might do today.
In the end, I don't really care whether she wins or loses, I just want her to have fun and do her best. I think she will be fine, really, but the dad within me thinks...GO...you can do this! As parents we get older and fatter and at some point we decide to realize that we are not going to do much more athletically and we hand things off to our kids. So we vicariously live and die with them. We scream at officials, we celebrate their victories, and some day we pay off admissions officers at universities to ensure they get into a good college.
This is why when somebody asks me now what my favorite team is, I no longer say the Royals or Sporting KC or the Chiefs. It's whatever team my kids happen to be playing on. The older I get I don't understand why people get so crazy about rooting for laundry. Celebrate who you know and enjoy the rest.
