What Goes Around Comes Around

Part of being a good parent is supporting your kids’ as best you can in their various activities. Sometimes this can be very excruciating painful. I don’t know how many Cub Scout Pinewood Derbies; grade school, middle school, high school basketball and football tournaments; swimming meets; church and school programs, etc.; my parents attended over the years as they raised four boys, but the number is high, maybe too high to count. Certainly many of the activities in which they supported us were painfully boring, perhaps uneventful, and unintentionally comical. And I’m fairly certain that if they’d had a choice (in their minds they didn’t, for they felt that that choice was made when they decided to raise a family), they would rather have flossed their teeth with piano wire than be in some hot, smelly, musky gymnasium/auditorium or standing on the sidelines of a football field in the sizzling, ruthless, August heat, cheering on one or more of their sons. But being the petulant turd of a child that I sometimes could be, I of course didn’t appreciate my parents’ sacrifices during those times. Heck, I didn’t even see those as sacrifices. In my mind it was my absolute, God-given right to always have at least one parent at all events I was involved in. Anything less was unacceptable. Ahhh but life, karma, the universe, whatever you choose to call it, has a way of evening the score if you will. In a cute little song recorded several years ago, The Statler Brothers expressed this sentiment better than I ever could. See if the lyrics to it don’t put a smile across your face (for the purpose of not spoiling the inpact of the content of the song, I’ve purposely left out its title. It was written, however, by Don Reid of said group). I just spent an unusual evening At a banquet that still won’t digest Watching this year’s high school heroes Get awarded for what they do best There’s a letter for the one that jumped highest And one ran faster by far One broke the 200 meters And one broke her arm on the bar The baseball team took the honors The MVP stole the show The coach looked scared with a tie on Swore next year they’d be 15 and 0 And in tomorrow morning’s newspaper There’ll be pictures that surely reveal Young men looking strange with no caps on And tomboys in dresses and heals And I've stood up there where they’re standing And never once thought I would be Sitting out here where I’m sitting Looking more like my daddy than me Twenty some years from tomorrow These same boys and girls will find An old faded newspaper clipping Yellow and torn up with time Their daughters and sons will be standing Up there where they used to be And only then will they know what I’m feeling When they’re sitting out here with me And I've stood up there where they’re standing Behind the MVP But it’s late; I’m tired and still hungry Acting more like my daddy than me I’m getting more like my daddy than me