A guest post from my daughter Maddie.
In light of the recent tragedies occurring nationwide, I’ve heard many voice their fear of raising children in this generation. I’m sure that preceding generations harbored the same fee…
Source: A Reshaped Spirituality: Guidelines for the Millennial
I guess most graduating seniors these days like to use the top of their graduation cap as a form of expression. If this had been an “in” thing to do back in the 80’s, I’m sure my cap would have looked like a Skoal can or Van Halen album cover.
Our daughter Maddie graduates next week. When I came across her cap last night, I held back tears. “She knew who she was and whose she was”.
On our way to Maddie’s regional track meet today, her little brother Kal asked in that irritating little brother way, “why do we even have to go to Maddie’s track meet?” Before I could reply in “dad tone” with a lecture, her sophomore brother answered beautifully from the front seat, “because it could be Maddie’s last track meet, and we love her, and we’re gonna support her”. This was a day that was going call for support.
I’ve watched in silence many times as our kids have had disappointing finishes in sporting events. It’s a struggle to hold your tongue when poor results line up perfectly with the amount of and the consistency of training that went into preparation for contests. But that wasn’t going to be the case today. Maddie had finished 2nd in region and 13th in state as a junior in the 800m run. Excitement and confidence fueled her motivation for her senior season. She had trained consistently in the offseason and supplemented her team training during the season with extra work with a trainer. Maddie was ready for this day.
On an unseasonably cold May day, Maddie lined up to start her 800m run with high hopes. She had turned in a season-best time the week before that was 6 seconds better than her previous best. There was an outside chance of being a regional champ and a good chance of advancing to the state track meet, simply by matching her time from a week ago.
With her sister, two brothers, two grandmothers, and her mother & I nervously watching, she got off to a good start. But as she got into the first straight stretch, disaster struck. Her feet became tangled with another runner’s. Maddie stayed on her feet. The other runner went down. But Maddie absorbed hard contact from the falling runner and spent 20 feet trying her best to stay on her feet. There was no recovering. The race was basically over for her. Maddie finished 6th, almost 18 seconds off her time from her last meet.
I stood in silence, overwhelmed with parental emotions. For all the times I’d thought and said, “I love to watch you play”, I knew I’d watched her play for the last time. A sobering thought. And the injustice. For all her training and effort, her own efforts did not determine her place of finish on this day.
Little brother Kal stewed with anger. In his eyes, Maddie got tripped. She got cheated. It wasn’t fair. She deserved another chance. He was distraught over the unfairness of it all.
I thought of all the complaints he has lodged against me. “Dad you always tell me that, I get tired of hearing it”……….Life’s not fair. You’ll live. Get up, you’ll be alright. But he doesn’t understand it yet.
I looked out past the finish line. Maddie does understand it. I saw her hugging the girl she got tangled up with. Two upset young ladies consoling each other for disappointing finishes. Life isn’t fair. Bad things happen. It doesn’t do any good to place blame or become angry. What matters is how you respond to disappointment. You can’t win every game or every race, but only you can decide when you’re defeated.
When her mother and I met up with her as she left the track, I couldn’t find any words. She was visibly upset. A perfectly formed shoe mark across her knee pretty much summed up her final 800m race. I just hugged her in silence, knowing that if I tried to speak, my own tears would come.
And as I held our daughter, I knew……she was disappointed but not distraught. Sad but not angry. Hurting but not defeated. She knows who she is. She knows who she belongs to. She is a child of the King.
Someone asked her mother and me recently what we had done as parents of our daughters. I didn’t have an answer. I do now. It’s not what we have done as parents, but it is what they have come to understand.
Their identity is in Christ.
Bad things will happen. Life’s not fair. Physical and emotional pain will come. But they will not be defeated. They will always get back up.
They’ll be alright.
As we parted ways to go in separate directions after the meet, I hugged her one more time. This time I found my words. “I’m proud of who you are”.
A funny thing happened on the way to supposedly leading my daughter and her friends to basketball greatness. They all became awesome. But not necessarily at basketball.
My wife played college basketball. I played high school basketball. This is a basketball house. Doggone it, my four kids are all gonna be basketball players! I was determined to guide my daughter and whoever wanted to tag along, down the path to basketball greatness.
From 3rd grade through 8th grade, I was Maddie’s coach. I’d never coached before this adventure, but I knew basketball and I knew kids. I could figure it out as I went, right? Was I preparing them for high school basketball? Was I giving life lessons? Could I even communicate basketball in a language that young girls were able to grasp? Could I provide a path for each player to achieve greatness if they desired? Did these young ladies love the game of basketball? Would they become good high school players?
I thought the answer to all these questions was “YES”. I always reminded them that they were teaching me as much as I was teaching them. About life. About being a leader. About being a better communicator. But I’m sure none of the girls understood that they were unfortunate guinea pigs to my learning experiment.
When you learn on the fly you mostly learn by your own mistakes. And what was my biggest mistake?
I coached all of these girls as if they were basketball players for life. It turns out they were only basketball players through their middle school years for the most part.
My daughter Maddie is now a senior. Our high school’s basketball team will celebrate Senior Night this week. Maddie won’t be part of that celebration. Neither will 14 other girls that played together on that 6th grade team of 2009. Mandy is our lone senior basketball player. I find a great sense of pride and joy in Mandy’s basketball accomplishments…….from a distance now. As she finishes her career, I’m hit with doubts.
Now that she’s in the homestretch of her career, did I do all I could do to prepare her for success? To instill a great work ethic and to be coachable? To be a great teammate with a positive attitude? To enjoy the game? To play with confidence, to believe in herself?
And what about the rest of the players, knowing now the direction they took was away from basketball? The “should haves”. I should have laughed more and yelled less. I should have coached the looks on their faces instead of their actions on the court. I should have searched harder for small victories and successes for every single player. I should have coached less and cheered more.
But I don’t lose sleep with the regrets of “what ifs” and “should haves” though. Why? Because I know that Mandy has turned out to be an awesome young lady as well as a very solid basketball player. And when I look at the other girls from that 6th grade team (that seems like yesterday), I see that they also have moved on to be awesome in other activities.
Soccer, cross-country, track, volleyball, band, cheerleading, modeling, golf, archery, and more.
Colossians 3:23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters
And they are, without a doubt………..AWESOME AT LIFE!
Coaches and parents, don’t set out with intentions to lead your kids to greatness. Instead, teach them to pursue excellence in all things. In doing this, they might just find greatness on their own.
Or in the case of Maddie and her middle school teammates…….awesomeness.
I can’t take any credit for this. But I can give thanks to the Lord for the times shared with these amazing young ladies. And I’m forever grateful for the lessons they taught me along the way.
We had a goofy catchphrase, “If you can’t do it right in practice, how do you expect to do it right in games?” The games are almost over. And I see that my girls, from a distance……….seem to be doing just fine.
Good luck Mandy. So proud to say I was once your coach!
I found myself in an unfamiliar place at the end of what turned out to be Maddie’s last high school cross country regional meet. A strange series of events led us to stick around to watch the last finisher in the boys race. I’d never even witnessed the last finisher in a girls race.
Maddie, a senior now, has been running in varsity races since she was a 6th grader. At many of those meets, she has found herself in the shadow of a high-finishing big sister. A running joke developed between Maddie and me over the years that her success would be measured in whether she puked or not after she finished.
“If you don’t puke, you can find a ride home with somebody else.”
Where you finish isn’t as important as how hard you compete and push yourself. When I was tied up with basketball coaching duties and unable to watch our girls run, a text update from my wife might read, “Maddie isn’t sure what place she finished, but she wants you to know that she puked after the race.”
I wasn’t always there to see every race. But I know that Maddie always finished well, never near the rear of the pack. And her mother and I always wanted to get to her as soon as possible after she finished because she truly did push herself to her limit in every race (even when she didn’t puke). I realized today I didn’t have a clue what it was like for those last finishers. I’d never stuck around to watch them cross the finish line.
This being Maddie’s last meet, there was a somber mood when she was done running. We talked, hugged a lot, and maybe even shed some tears. Her mother reluctantly left to try to catch big sister’s final college soccer game of the season (3 hours away).
Maddie and two of her biggest fans (her two brother) stuck around with me to watch East Carter’s boys run. We drifted toward the finish line to cheer for our boys team as they finished.
There was a crowd of approximately 100 people lining both sides of the homestretch, cheering wildly as the top finishers came in. Once approximately half the runners finished, it was pretty much determined who would qualify for the state meet. The crowd shrunk quickly.
We cheered the last of the East Carter boys as they finished. I stuck around a moment longer in a reflective mood, thinking of all the years our girls had been running, and knowing this was the last trip. Looking up, I saw only two runners in the distance remaining on the course. At this point I noticed that the crowd of more than 100 onlookers had dwindled to only about 6 people besides our family.
And that’s when I witnessed the coolest event of the day. A runner from Ashland Blazer’s girls team came running back from the finish line, toward the homestretch where the handful of fans were standing. And she was doing her best to generate excitement and support for a teammate who was still on the course.
“Come on guys, we have to go cheer for David!”
But I didn’t notice anyone following her. What I did notice was an Ashland runner way off in the distance, far behind the next-to-last place runner. I turned to my three kids, “we’re gonna cheer for these last two finishers.”
A middle-aged man across the course from me, who may have been walking away stopped in his tracks and asked the girl, “what’s the boy’s name?”
The theme spread quickly among those of us who remained:
Spread out and cheer for David.
Eventually the last two runners passed.
“Good job buddy.”
“Hang in there.”
“Good job David”
“Almost there, finish strong.”
Those last two runners had a nice cheering section as they finished. They might have finished to silence if not for the actions of the young lady from Asland Blazer. A great teammate.
The athletes that finish consistently in the front and middle of the pack…….maybe they have the advantages of higher levels of talent, self-motivation, and support/encouragement from parents..
For the athlete that finishes in the rear of the pack, there is the danger of finishing alone and discouraged. The danger of giving up.
Today, perhaps two runners finished last because that’s exactly where their training and experience placed them. But maybe, simply by the actions of this young lady preventing them from finishing in silence…….they will be motivated to continue on next season instead of giving up. And maybe their training and determination will reach a new level.
For the young lady from Ashland, well done! Thankful that our family was part of your act of encouragement.
For anyone who has ever coached youth sports of any kind, from pee-wee to middle school, and even high school sports in some cases………I have a deep question that has been floating in my mind in recent days. Just give me minute to circle around to it.
My youngest daughter wrapped up her high school soccer career tonight. The days leading up to it flooded me with memories of all her games past, both far and near. Thoughts of different leagues, cities, coaches, teammates, hotel rooms, victory, defeat. Reflections of how she changed over the years as a player, a competitor, and a person. Wondering how and why things have played out exactly as they have. Thinking about influences both good and bad that could have or would have made things better or worse if they’d been different.
And I started thinking about the kids that I have coached as my kids have grown up, from youth soccer to travel soccer, Upward basketball to middle school basketball. And I just can’t help wondering……
If all coaches could see into the future, to that very day when a kid puts away the cleats or the hi-tops for the last time and walks away from a game………would they choose to coach individual kids differently than they presently do?
Every kid walks away from their chosen sport someday…….then what?
Effective youth coaching is psychiatry and it is parenting. Each player is unique, and they have specific needs that team sports can bring them.
Many coaches fail to fill those needs because they falsely assume they are training the next state champs. They fail to see each child beyond that day when the sports equipment goes in the yard sale or the closet.
Shouldn’t the journey of sports teach these things and more to prepare kids for life beyond sports?
These things still matter when the cheering stops.
The cheering stopped for Maddie tonight. Her team lost in the regional semi-finals. In a game where she and her teammates truly “left it on the field”, the score was tied at the end of 80 minutes of regulation. Two 5-minute overtimes later, the score was still tied. Penalty kicks would now decide the match.
Maddie stood over the ball, ready to attempt her shot with her team facing a nearly hopeless 3-1 deficit.
If she missed this shot, the game was over. The season was over.
Sitting on my knees beside my wife, I simply mumbled, “Maddie needs to be to one to take this shot.”
Not because it could be the game winner………because it would be the shot that would seal the loss if she missed.
I don’t know what kind of reaction or look Kristy gave me, but I went on to say, “Maddie needs to be the one to take this shot, because I know she can handle missing the shot to end the game. She can handle it. That’s my daughter!”
And my voice cracked at the enormity of what I was saying in a trailing voice……..”that is OUR daughter”.
She missed. Game over. Season over. High school career over for her and her senior teammates.
Maddie played her heart out. And I was so proud of her. But when those words came out of my mouth, “that’s our daughter” it hit me so clearly. I was not proud of her effort or her performance.
I was proud of who she has become.
She met her mother and me after the game with head held high. That’s our daughter.
Do your best. Have fun. Train and play to win. In the end it’s just a game. The end came tonight. I’m thankful for all those who have prepared her in the right ways to go beyond this “end”.
If you’re coaching your 1st game or your 1000th, take an occasional peek toward the end. Winning is a by-product of doing all things the right way. Some lessons can’t be cast aside for the sake of early wins or just because you ARE winning games.
And while your players are dreaming of making that dramatic game-winning shot, you better spend some time preparing their toughness and character……for missing it.
I can’t get my mind around a world where killing unborn babies is considered women’s healthcare. We who oppose abortion are said to fight “the war on women”. Something so selfish and barbaric, explained away as a choice or a right. But none of this is a news flash, so I won’t touch on the usual talking points.
This weekend, in a moment of strange parental flashback, my mind was opened to another side of abortion that I don’t often see discussed; how men change when they become dads.
I spent about six hours Saturday using a weedeater. Headphones on, iTunes library set to shuffle. Usually a great time of reflection for a wandering mind.
Metallica’s “Hero of the Day” assaulted my ears, above the sound of my machinery. And songs always remind me of events or periods of life. My thoughts immediately went to my oldest daughter, who is away at college.
Just over 19 years ago, Metallica released Load, and it just happened to be the CD that was in the player of our Ford Explorer when my wife went into labor. Kristy was cool with Metallica but I operated the radio with the assumption that she wasn’t in the mood for any headbanging stuff on the way to the hospital to give birth to our first child.
So the volume stayed low. “Hero of the Day” was one track that could be considered a ballad, so it was the only song that got turned up loud enough to hear on that memorable trip of nervous excitement.
Over the years, I’ve thought of that night every time I’ve heard that song. But on this day, after initially having thoughts of really just missing my daughter, my thoughts circled around to the kind of man I was on that last night
before I became a father.
Because I became a different man the first time I held that baby girl in my arms. What I thought I knew about love changed instantly. My view of the world changed the instant I became a father.
God’s love for me became more real than ever before. I accepted Jesus as my savior shortly after. Not saying that I’m a super Christian or even a good one, but I am saying without doubt that I am still being transformed every day, and that becoming a father is what started the transformation.
When men become fathers and embrace that role, change happens. Selfish becomes selfless. Unmotivated becomes motivated. Harsh becomes gentle. Irresponsible becomes responsible. Apathy becomes compassion and determination. Underachievers become overachievers. The unloving love. The short-sighted develop a vision for the future. Lousy men become decent men. Good men become great men.
When men become fathers, they have great purpose in life. They not only become valuable to their families, their potential for positive impact on the world around them increases dramatically.
Abortion robs them of this purpose. I have no idea what the statistical factors are as to the presence of a father in abortion situations. But I know that, in cases of abortion, the possibility of a man being amazingly transformed by bringing a child into the world, is exactly zero.
Going back in time for one or two generations, consider a small percentage of men transformed from lousy men to good men, from good men to great men. What impact could they have had on growing children and society as a whole? Should we be shocked by what we are seeing with the disappearance of traditional families, lack of respect for authority, and declining morals?
My main point is this:
There are 3 individuals that God has given life to in this equation. There is mother. There is a baby. There is a dad. To speak of rights and choice of only the mother is a convenient and selfish lie.
Women killing their unborn children and men missing out on the chance to be transformed by fatherhood (and men who make the horrible choice to not raise their own children).
Do we have to pretend like there are worse things going on in this country? I don’t think there are.
I am a much different man, a better man, because my children were born. The world is different place because my four children are here and I believe that eternity will certainly be different as well. That is pro-life. That is truth.
Some years ago, my daughter had a Calico cat that I despised. And I had a gun that I’d never fired. But no, it’s not what you think.
I can’t recall the exact sequence of events on that fateful day, only that a UPS van that turned around in our rural driveway, plowed over poor Daisy. But Daisy didn’t die. She was left in a sad distorted mess and destined to die. It became my job to put her out of her misery.
That brings us to my brief history of gun ownership. Events in my life had led me to purchase a small caliber pistol for potential protection against the presence of some evil folks who lurked on the outskirts of my work life. But I had never fired it.
My experience with guns (here in the heart of hunting and gun-loving friends) consisted of one bold shot into a pond with a .22 rifle as bored teen that sent a large frog a long distance through the air……..in a lot of pieces.
So I find and load my pistol, and drag poor Daisy to a secluded spot behind our house to bring her life to a merciful end. The only problem was, that even though she couldn’t move, it still took me three shots to get a direct hit.
Apparently I turned my head, closed my eyes and flinched each time I shot. But I finally finished the deed. I’m pretty sure my kids still think of this story every time they see a UPS truck.
But why do people buy guns? Why do people vehemently defend their right to own guns? And why do politicians bring up gun control laws every time a news story of gun violence reaches national airwaves?
I couldn’t begin to get inside the mind of an avid gun owner. But I think the main reason that people purchase their first gun later in life is simply to protect themselves against the presence of evil people in their world. A couple of horrific news stories motivated my wife to arm herself………not against guns, but against godless evil people.
Make no mistake, it is of greatest importance to be more heavily armed that whatever potential evil we may face. If somebody wants to assault me with bare hands, then I want a baseball bat (since I’ve never been in a fist fight in 47 years, I don’t imagine I could win one now). If someone comes at me with a knife, I’ll be needing a gun. If danger shows up with a gun, I’ll most likely need a bigger gun.
I won’t argue just how big of a gun is big enough. And I won’t argue the finer points of intrusions and registrations that gun control regulations present.
But I will toss this out there:
There needs to be a shift away from freaking out about what people possess (guns), and serious consideration of changing the way people think (heart)
The problem with so many problems is that government wants to step in and overstep in cases where inaction is perfectly fine. But politicians want to grab every horrible headline and say, “Yes, I am going to fix that for everybody.”
Hillary Clinton certainly wasn’t going to miss her chance after two TV journalists were fatally shot on the air last week.
“We have got to do something about gun violence in America. I will take it on. There are many people who face it and know it but then turn away because it’s hard,” Clinton said. “It’s a very political, difficult issue in America. But I believe we are smart enough, we are compassionate enough, to figure out how to balance the legitimate Second Amendment rights with preventive measures and control measures so that whatever motivated this murderer who eventually took his own life, we will not see more deaths, needless, senseless deaths.”
Gun control would have prevented this double murder? Probably not. You simply can’t ignore the condition of a man’s heart in all these discussions.
She claims that it’s a political problem (and of course, she will fix it). But it’s not a problem of laws, regulation, and ownership. Gun violence is a problem of moral decay.
Laws can be made to bring and maintain order in society. But government cannot enter homes and legislate the presence of moral values and respect for life.
Instead, government officials constantly claim to fix problems that they can’t fix, but all they achieve is poisoning impressionable minds with false hope of easier and better lives by someone else’s provision. The result is that misguided souls experience the disappearance of personal responsibility. Dependent people become hopeless people. Hopeless people become angry people.
Just as you can’t fight a war on poverty by passing out checks & removing incentives to work, you can’t fight a war against hatred and violence by ignoring moral issues, placing blame on objects, and cultivating false hope with empty promises.
We don’t have a gun problem. We have a people problem….a hope problem. Ever increasing government intrusion and chatter breeds hopelessness and helplessness.
God and self, in that order.
Big government……silence is golden. You can’t really fix a lot of things. People can fix things. But the more you intrude and the more you talk, you continue to demonstrate a fine ability to make matters worse.
“Oh, take your time, don’t live too fast
Troubles will come and they will pass” -Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Simple Man”
There’s no time like the present to be fully present in the lives of those we love.
I saw a post on Facebook recently, an article link about “what men really think about.” After reading it, I realized that most of the normal “man thoughts” didn’t really describe me. My mind was consumed by one thing, logistics. I think my wife could possibly have an overload of logistical thoughts as well.
There is a silent danger in busy lifestyles to have our present thoughts consumed by thoughts of “what’s next”. Who needs to be where at what time? How will I get everything done? How will I deal with ____ problem tomorrow? How will I fix problems at work? How will I carve out future time with my family? How will we pay for college (for 4)? In what areas do my kids need guidance or redirection?
You get the picture. The mind is distracted from the present. Compound this with the tendency to have over-filled schedules, running quickly from place to place, event to event, and you eventually risk living a life that lacks depth. Healthy interactions are replaced by an urgency to maintain schedules and show up on time.
Eventually, we miss too much of the present because we are distracted by an unhealthy urgency to maintain what’s next.
I’m not suggesting that we live safe, idle lives out of fear of overload. We should always be willing to consider doing more than we consider ourselves capable of doing, for the purpose of developing faith in God, and a reliance on His strength and not our own.
But just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should do it. Recognize when life becomes too much and too fast. Our level of distraction when interacting with loved ones is a good measure of this.
My son Kal has a great love for his three dogs. Of our four children, he is the first to actually follow through on the promise of, “if I can have a puppy, I will take care of it.”
When I got out of bed for church on Sunday morning, Kal was nowhere to be found in the house. He was already outside playing with his dogs. By the time he came in and got dressed for church and got his breakfast, we were nearing the point of running late for church. Being late isn’t a big deal to me, but since I had a class to teach, I at least wanted to not be late late.
His mother and sister had already left, but I realized his big brother was still in bed. But just as I started to go roust big brother from his slumber, Kal launched excitedly into a tale of something his puppy Zelda had done earlier in the morning. I wasn’t the least bit interested in hearing this story. And we really needed to get moving to get to church on time.
But there was a gentle nudge inside me as I looked down and saw the excitement on his face as he talked…….just as I was ready to tell him to tell me later because “we gotta go”.
This is Important to him. Today and forever…….to have his dad’s full attention and to place value on his words.
“Look him in the eyes and listen to every word he says, like it is the most important thing you will hear all day”.
This is the thought that crashed into my brain. So I listened. And I’m sure that those two minutes that I almost lost because I was RUSHING to be somewhere on time, represented the most valuable two minutes of my whole day.
Simply being present in the present. Getting something right that I’ve gotten wrong hundreds of times before.
If it’s important enough for our kids to talk to us about (or ask questions about), then it’s important enough for parents to give full attention to and provide answers.
Distracted parenting means we aren’t watching or listening like we should. Value the words of your children. Be attentive enough to see opportunities for praise and encouragement (and correction if necessary).
When parents stop listening, kids stop talking. When kids stop talking, parents lose a big part of their ability to have a continued positive impact in the lives of their growing children.
Plan ahead but don’t let your thoughts stay in the future. Live a full life, but don’t let your schedules dictate your life. And perhaps most importantly, it may be time to make changes in your life when your level of distraction and overload causes you to miss the little moments in the days of your children…………that become collectively huge moments when you miss them.
I write this for everyone who has ever owned a guitar but never learned to play, for we are the ones that ensure the presence of cheap guitars on EBay.
A trip down memory lane of the songs we never learned how to play.
My son Kal got a guitar this week. An EBay find, $45 for a Fender Squier Mini.
He has no previous guitar experience. I only hope he surpasses his dad on his musical journey.
Approximately one minute into his journey, I was flooded with memories of my own failed guitar life in the late 80’s.
He plugged into a mini-Peavey amp, turned everything on and got ready to play his first lick.
“Wait Kal, let me find you a pick” But I couldn’t find a pick.
Rewind to 1988. A townhouse apartment at the University of Kentucky that I shared with my brother Scott and two friends. I had a Martin Stinger electric guitar that always stayed propped up somewhere in plain sight. But I couldn’t play. Still can’t. But every rock and roller wants to pick up an ax and at least play a recognizable portion of a few key masterpieces. Iron Man, Stairway To Heaven, Smoke On the Water.
Most guys that came into our apartment picked up that guitar and banged around on it. Few had any actual skill. But I could never keep up with a pick. My friend Cass delivered the same answer time and time again when I told him there was no pick:
“You got a Dorito?
Last night, Kal looked puzzled when I told him I would get him a Dorito to play with. I ended up cutting up a gift card in the shape of a pick so he could get started on Smoke On the Water.
In those college days, there were no YouTube videos to watch, Guitar tab websites, or guitar tab books to learn songs from. But we didn’t really care about learning songs. We just wanted to play cool parts. I tried to figure things out by ear, and my ear was horrible. My brother had taken piano lessons as a young boy so he had some understanding of music and chords. He tried to show me some things, but I was too impatient to learn. I just wanted to shred, and I was too impatient to learn how to shred.
He is now a skilled guitarist, as is my dad. My dad, brother, and sister once picked and sang together in church. Afterwards, people who didn’t really mean to be insulting, asked me, “Can’t you do anything?” And the only answer I could give was, “No, no I can’t.”
But I wasn’t without my moments in my final year of college. My friend Marty moved in with a Yamaha 12-string guitar, and he actually knew how to correctly play major riffs from awesome songs. Dust In the Wind, Sweet Home Alabama, Crazy Train, Don’t Fear the Reaper, and Stairway To Heaven. Of course he freely shared this knowledge with me, and I was well on my way to a few more years of not being able to play.
Upon returning home from college and getting married, guitar mags were now widespread, as were tab books, so I acquired a sizable pile. Developed an interest in thrash metal. And Justice For All, Hangar 18, Symphony of Destruction. But I just really couldn’t play. Still I clung to this vision of possibly buying a really expensive guitar and hooking it up to the right amp………and the awesome sound would take my playing to another level.
Thankfully I never make that silly purchase. Soon after, I became a father and unofficially declared my guitar career over.
I still pick up random guitars and play the opening licks from Enter Sandman. I still laugh when people who know my dad and brother ask me “don’t you play?”.
And I could only laugh when Kal asked me how he was going to learn how to play.
“YouTube videos son. I sure can’t teach you anything.”
And a last-minute confession that might get me kicked out of the Metal Militia: Marty showed me how to play Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead Or Alive” on his 12-string. And I thought it was cool.
Some more great perspective from my daughter Maddie following a mission trip to Dominican Republic
Just A Dad 