Month: January 2024

Lions & Tigers & Jaguars, Oh My

/ Jeremy / Leave a comment

Our kids are suddenly obsessed with football.

Wait, let me rephrase that.

Our kids are suddenly obsessed with large-feline-based football teams.

We raised them with a healthy dose of Eagles and Broncos games playing in the background. We proselytized hard for them to join us in loving both teams. But humans, even those of the smaller variety, possess free will. And our kids freely choose to support the Lions and Bengals. Along with, to a slightly less enthusiastic degree, the Jaguars and Panthers. (They love all God’s big cats, but the bigger the better.)

If their interest in football had started a year ago, our son’s previous obsession with birds would have dictated an allegiance to the Cardinals, Falcons, Ravens, Seahawks, and the hometown Eagles. Or if discovering football had coincided with his much-earlier farm animal fixation, maybe the Colts or Rams would have been his preferred team.

But timing is everything. And because their football discovery overlapped with their big-cat phase, we are now a family of Eagles, Broncos, Lions, and Bengals fans. At least until the kids start a sea-animal phase and decide the Dolphins are cool. Or maybe, given the kids’ names, they’ll opt for colors! Then they can root for the Browns, as well as the Reds in baseball.

(But I hope they don’t decide they like pirates, both because I don’t care for the Raiders or Buccaneers and also I don’t want them to start marauding, pillaging, or wearing an eye patch for non-functional reasons.)

It’s been fascinating to see their newfound fascination. They’re not yet intrigued by the actual sport of football. Instead, their interest is in team names, win-loss records, and game scores. They shout out “Lions!” or “Panthers!” every time they see or hear those words, or spot either team symbol. They love looking at displays of team logos, reading lists of team mascots, and scouring the NFL standings. They are very familiar, for instance, with the fact that the Panthers had an extremely bad season (“Only 2 wins!”) and that the Ravens had an extremely good one (“13 wins to 4 losses!”). They know who made the playoffs and who just barely missed that threshold.

It thrills them to see the scores at the bottom of the TV screen, and they helpfully give us regular updates during football games we’re watching. For instance, they shouted “It’s 0 and 13!” when the Eagles went down early by 2 touchdowns against the Buccaneers in a playoff game. Good to know!

After the kids went to sleep at halftime of that game (when it was 16-9) and then woke up the next day, I told them the lopsided final score (which was 32-9). They each said with wide eyes: “The Eagles got nothing in the 2nd half!” Which offered me an endearing lesson in humor and humility. So thank you for that, my dear children.

The day before that, we were hunkered down for a few hours at the mall, escaping a jagged-windy-frigid day. And I decided to take them to Dave & Buster’s to watch some playoff football since we don’t have cable. We rarely go to restaurants, a residual effect of Covid, so it’s an exciting novelty for them.

It was easily the loudest place we have been together in ages but my son, who used to refuse to be in high-volume places, was unfazed by the pandemonium. (Hooray for progress!)

I showed them the massive wall of televisions, to their great amazement, and they started noticing game scores. It brings me joy to see the joy they find in comparing the numbers and watching them change in real time. I was a box-score nerd as a kid, and maybe my kids will appreciate sports statistics too.

Then the host seated us in a high-top table, which the kids thought was fun… until my son tumbled off their chair, flat on the floor. (Don’t worry, he was okay!) Which led the manager, with liability concerns gleaming in his eye, to diplomatically reassign us to a booth. Which was probably for the best.

Clearly the Wingert family’s restaurant game needs some work.

So I ordered some fries and we watched a quarter and a half of the Packers/Cowboys game. The kids, with no knowledge of either team beyond their record, got a kick out of watching the score change early and often. They said things like “The Packers have 27 points already!” and “The Cowboys still have zero!” (Sincere apologies to any Cowboys-fan friends who are reading this. It was a rough weekend for you and me both. May we find solidarity in our respective football miseries.)

So now my kids have a taste of the hectic-sports-bar experience, with sippy straw plastic water cups and my fully caffeinated iced tea as our beverages of choice.

What can I say? We’re a pretty wild bunch.

And thus begins the chapter of my parenting life where the kids join my wife and me in our love of professional football. For years I wasn’t sure if either of them would end up being my football buddy, which would have been fine. But now, they suddenly both are! It has been a delightful romp so far, and will likely continue that way… until they get older and I have to explain concussions, and sports gambling, and player suspensions for drugs or misconduct, and the fact that the whole empire is built on advertising.

For now, I’m savoring the early, simple part of being a football family. As a 9-year-old in 1989, I was the only one in my household who developed an interest in sports-watching. I discovered the Eagles in the era of Randall Cunningham and Reggie White, and I passed along that Sunday game-watching allegiance to most of my fellow Wingerts.

Now, 35 years later, my wife and I are passing it along to our kids. So here you go, my little lion cub and my even littler tiger cub. I present to you the sport that has given me as much euphoric joy as it has given me agonizing heartbreak. (You’re welcome?)

But please, just enjoy your simple mascots-and-scores version of the sport for as long as you can. And I promise I will never go back to being the moody, grumpy football fan I used to be before you were born. Life is far too short for any of that self-imposed gloominess based on wins and losses in a silly game.

I promise that we will always have fun with this thing. And if you completely lose interest in football by next year, I promise that’s totally fine as well. Whatever you enjoy is fine by me.

As long as I get to enjoy it with you 2 next to me at the table.

Beware the Ides of January

/ Jeremy / Leave a comment

There’s good news and there’s bad news for my early 2024 headspace.

The good news — good enough to still shock me 2 months later — is that I’ve been off Lexapro since early November. 67 days to be exact, not that anyone’s eagerly counting or anything. I continue to feel entirely myself, with no withdrawal symptoms and no darkness. Nothing but lucidity and light.

Call it serendipity, call it providence, call it hard proof of someone’s hardcore anti-pharma theory (not mine, to be clear). Heck, you can even call it sheer dumb happy luck if you feel like it (although I won’t). All I know is I’m endlessly grateful to be more emotionally functional and consistently lucid than I’ve been since before the Covid era.

But the bad news is… it’s January now. And the January/February stretch has proven to be a nasty gauntlet for me in recent years. My seasonal swings brutalize me each year, and winter is often the most brutal swing. The lack of sunlight, the lack of red letters on the calendar, the lack of ability to take the kids outside after work (until February), and the general lack of color all contribute to a downbeat doldrum mindset.

For now, I feel pretty good. And I know what tools I have in the seasonal affective compartment of my mental health toolkit. Using the light therapy lamp my wife bought me a year ago, for one. Listening to stirring music and watching emotionally engaging films. Getting outside as much as possible, even when it’s cold and overcast. Taking my kids to every imaginable place of wonder — indoor or outdoor, free or cheap — every chance I get. Drinking enough water. Getting enough sleep.

But the last few days have been a little iffy. My mind has faded a little, my fingers aren’t typing as cleanly, and my lucidity has marginally dropped. I’m hoping it’s only the craziness of classes starting again at the law school where I work, but the timing worries me. January is a perennial beast.

My ups and downs are well documented (because I have, well, documented them) and it’s a bit difficult for me to believe this winter won’t ultimately prove to be like the last 3 or 4. My seasonal cycles have been like clockwork. January to March, DOWN. April to June, UP. July to September, DOWN. October to December, UP. Frustratingly, my mind works in 3-month increments. I’m functional enough during the down times, but I’d sure like to be more than functional, more than 6 months a year.

Who knows, though? Maybe the clock will work differently this time. I mean, some of this is in my control, right? I would certainly like to believe it is. I would like to think that carefully utilizing the aforementioned toolkit could re-route me into a more lucid (or at least a steadier) winter headspace.

Perhaps the last paragraph is Pollyanna-esque wishful thinking. Why would this winter be different? I genuinely don’t know yet. I just know that I plan to keep waking up early and writing about it. Waking up early and getting my mind right before the day begins. Waking up early and doing the thing.

The moment I stop doing the thing, all the things, is the moment I start to fade. And I refuse to fade. Or at least I am resolved to refuse to fade.

As Jets to Brazil once wrote (and sang): “I know, I can write my way out of this.”

And so I write, hoping to stave this off. Writing is my alchemy. Writing is my potion.

Time will tell whether I can continue concocting that magic elixir this winter.

Time always tells.

Blogette #1: Resolutions, Shmesolutions

/ Jeremy / Leave a comment

A blogette is a tiny blog. It’s like a mini baguette, in prose form. A crisp little snack. It can be either sweet or savory, so it pairs well with honey or butter.

I’m trying something new here. Even though I’m wildly verbose, I’m attempting a quick blogette that takes me less than 45 minutes to write (and takes you less than 2 minutes to read). For once, I’ll get right to the point.

Enjoy the snack.

I like fresh starts in theory, but I’m skeptical too. Skeptical of any resolution that’s meant to start on a day other than today. “Next month,” or even “next week,” is the easiest possible time to do anything. Heck, in my experience with resolutions of any kind, “next week” is a mere abstraction.

And while a fresh start is a truly wonderful thing, January 1 is no different from April 17. Or July 8. Or October 21. There is nothing innately magic about New Year’s Day.

Here’s the thing, though. We conjure up magic on any day, at any moment, when we prioritize self-care. Or self-awareness. Or self-expression.

When we simply do the thing.

So that’s what I hope to do this year.

And this is me, doing the thing.