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I Think My 2 Year-Old Son Is Better At Sports Than I Am

January 27, 2013 at 11:00 pm , by 

2 years, 2 months.

Dear Jack,

Right now, I think your athletic abilities might be slightly greater than mine. Hopefully, it won’t always be that way. I do plan to catch up, though.

Granted, I won’t always literally be twice your height like I am currently, so I will eventually lose that one advantage over you.

When I was growing up, I wasn’t passionate about kicking and throwing a ball around, like the way you are now.

For your 2nd birthday back in November, you screamed with excitement as you opened your gift from Nonna and Papa:

“A basketball goal!” 

It’s still weird to me that A) you knew what it was called and B) you were able to pronounce it clearly enough for everyone to understand you.

Every Sunday morning as Mommy and I walk you past the kids’ basketball court at our church, you ask us, “I play for a few minutes?”

We’re always a solid 10 minutes late for the service now, but I never regret it, as I pick you up high in an attempt for you to slam dunk the ball through the hoop.

It’s not just basketball you have taken an interest in. After dinner now, Mommy and I play our own version of “Monkey in the Middle” with you, in the hallway of our townhouse.

I stand at the entrance of the living room and Mommy stands at the entrance of the dining room. We kick your miniature soccer ball to each other, with the room behind each other serving as the goal.

Meanwhile, you entertain yourself as you kick your orange volleyball in between Mommy and I in our line our fire, giggling yourself silly as you dodge the soccer ball that we kick inches away from you.

I guess you could call it “Dodge-Soccer Volley Monkey-in-the-Middle…”.

You just love the action, as random and technically dangerous as it definitely is.

As you get a little bit older, I”ll get to throw a football back and forth with you in the backyard, as the sun sets and we talk about your day. That’s a very important image in my head.

Playing both real and made-up ball games with you is lot of fun, but more importantly, it gives me a chance to engage you and get to know you better. The older you get, the more it will matter to both of us.

For now, the best benefit about playing “Dodge-Soccer Volley Monkey-in-the-Middle” is that it’s the perfect way to wear you out right before bedtime.

You go down so easily now. Of course, you sleep with your soccer ball in your bed every night. Sometimes, it’s the orange volleyball too.

If only I were making that up.

 

Love,

Daddy

 

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Spotlight on Dads: Jimmy Oliveira, A Giant NY Giants Fan

February 1, 2012 at 6:33 am , by 

14 months.

Jimmy Oliveira, a New York native, recently won the National Center for Fathering’s “Super Dad” Super Bowl contest. He received tickets for himself and his seven-year-old daughter, Gina, to attend Super Bowl XLVI.

They are both “giant” New York Giants fans who have a Sunday tradition of going to church and then rooting for the Giants. According to Gina, they “eat, live and breathe Big Blue” and have been attending the opening Giants game every season since she was 18-months-old.

Obviously, I jump at the chance to honor dads here on The Dadabase. I can tell that his daughter Gina is the light of his life and I wanted to hear him talk more about her, so I asked him a few questions about fatherhood:

What has been your biggest challenge so far as a dad?

“My daughter is amazing so there aren’t too many challenges, but one thing we seem to have a hard time with is keeping up with all of her extracurricular activities. Gina is very involved with activities such as dance, gymnastics and jiu-jitsu, and sometimes it can be challenging to get her to all of her activities on time.”

What is your favorite quirk about your daughter’s personality?

“Gina is very outgoing and knows exactly what she wants. She’s also very honest, and can sometimes be very blunt, but I love that about her. She is straight up about everything and tells it exactly like it is. With these personality traits, she has become a leader in her classroom, and I’m so proud of her for that.”

How do you most see yourself in your daughter?

“I see my personality a lot in Gina. As mentioned before, she can be very blunt but yet truthful, and that is exactly how I am. We are both very outgoing and motivated to get what we want out of life. Gina is not afraid to say how she feels, and I think that is something she has picked up from me.”

Congrats to Jimmy for winning the National Center for Fathering’s ‘Super Dad’ Super Bowl contest. And for his and Gina’s sake, good luck to the NY Giants this Sunday!

4 Comments Posted on People, Storytelling, Uncategorized

dad from day one: Passing on the Family Name

Thirty-six weeks.

It wasn’t until this weekend while visiting my parents in Alabama that I fully realized something: When Baby Jack is born, he will be the only male Shell (beyond me) to pass on the name, unless I eventually have another son.  My mom was telling me how we will need to get a “generational picture” taken, including my grandfather (John Shell), my dad (Jack Shell), myself (Nick Shell), and Baby Jack.  My dad only has one brother (Johnny Shell) and he only had daughters.  And I have no brothers.  So Baby Jack will carry on the Shell name, which translates in German as “loud and noisy”.

While the namesake is just that, a name, it still carries on an idea of the people with that name.  Not only their bloodline and physical characteristics, but also a reputation of that name.  When I think of what the Shell name stands for, I think of my grandfather (who I call “Paw Paw Shell”), my Uncle Johnny, and of course, my dad, because they are the three male Shell’s most closely related to me.  They all work very hard, will do anything for the family, will not tolerate any b.s. or drama, are extremely down to Earth, have a passion for classic cars, prefer The History Channel over watching sports on TV, and will always choose the great outdoors over the city life because they all live in the wooded mountains (which is different than living out in the country, by the way).

Physically, male Shell’s are between 5’ 7” and 5’ 11” (no shorter, no taller), have dark brown or black hair, have a thin frame, have a fairly prominent nose (not noticeably huge, but never smaller than average), are known to show up at each other’s houses unannounced, and have a weak spot for Moon Pies.  For me, there is just something about being “a Shell” that is distinguished.  Not in a classy way like the Vanderbilt name, or Presidential like the Kennedy name, but it’s the idea that when you meet someone with the Shell name, you’ll never forget them.  Shell’s stand out from the crowd.  Not in a “loud and noisy” aspect like the name actually implies, but set apart in a sense that if you know one of us, you know all of us.  And really, that’s how I imagine most families are.

It’s in a man’s heart to want to pass on the family name.  Not just for the sake of legacy, but also because of pride.  And while pride is typically a bad thing, when it comes to family, pride is a necessary staple.  I am proud to be a Shell, and proud to bring another one into this world.

All pictures with the “JHP” logo were taken by Joe Hendricks Photography:

Blog- www.photojoeblog.com

Website- www.joehendricks.com

 

2 Comments Posted on Nostalgia, People, Spirituality, Storytelling, Uncategorized, Writing

The Curious Case of the Sports Agnostic: Some Guys Just Don’t Care About Sports and They’re Okay with That

Religion and sports are alike in that while they both consist of plenty of true followers (the sincerely devoted), they have their fair share of agnostics (the apathetic yet open-minded) and naturally, some atheists (the passionately opposed).

I was born into a family where sports, for all practical purposes, simply did not exist.  We never talked about them, never watched them, and really, never played them.  Of course there was my 2nd grade year playing baseball- turns out, I was pretty decent.  And my 5th and 6th grade years of basketball- not so decent. There was no lofty moral issue we had against sports; it’s just that virtually no one on either side of my family gave them any thought.  Except my Uncle Al.

My mom’s brother Al has always been a huge University of Alabama football team fan- for every year of my childhood, thanks to him, I never was without several Alabama t-shirts, sweatshirts, stickers, and whatever else kind of proper memorabilia I would need as a kid growing up in the state of Alabama, where deciding your allegiance to either the University of Alabama or Auburn was only second to whether or not you had accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior.

Even now, on the front license plate holder of my Honda Element, I have a University of Alabama fan plate.  Beyond knowing the coach’s name (Nick Saban; easy name to remember since it’s so similar to mine), I can’t tell you much about the team in recent years other than last year was good for them, as was 1992, and that Bear Bryant died in 1983, less than a month after he retired.  But I am an Alabama fan, as opposed to Auburn.  And even if I’m their worst fan ever, I’m still a fan.  But that is the extent of my affiliation with anything in the world of sports.

There’s no way around it: I’m weird for being a guy who doesn’t care about sports.  Guys are clearly supposed to care about sports.  Throughout my whole life, I’ve tried to convince myself that I’m missing out.  That all those Saturday afternoons and Monday nights when I’m spending my time and efforts doing anything else, I should be in front of the TV watching the game.  And that for all the games I miss, I should if nothing else, check the scores online to have something to talk about with other guys the next day.

That despite the fact that team players are traded every season, I myself should stay loyal to certain teams.  Despite the fact that sports stars are multimillionaires while school teachers often make less $40,000 a year, I should still worship sports figures.  And though the outcome of each game and each season doesn’t actually affect reality, it does in the minds of sports fans, so therefore it should matter in my mind.

My apathy towards sports has a lot to do with the fact in my mind, sports aren’t logical.  I do see how sports feed that human instinct to replicate war in some way when we ourselves aren’t actually fighting, similar to how most young wild animals “play fight” to prepare each other to eventually kill for food and defend themselves and/or family members.   But I can’t see how or why sports should be relevant or important in my life to the degree that they are for so many people.  Clearly though, I’m the odd man out here.  And clearly, it’s my view of sports, not sports themselves, that is irrelevant.

I am a sports agnostic, not a sports atheist.  In other words, I’m cool about it.  I just know that people have fun playing and watching sports, so I respect that.  I’m still invited to Super Bowl Parties- because despite not knowing the rules of football, I can still have a good time with people who are having a good time, no matter what they’re doing.  And who knows, maybe in the back of their minds, sports fans hope to convert me once I finally see what I’m missing.  Maybe one day I will finally “get it”.

I have been asked since my first year of high school why it is that I can name any celebrity’s height or ethnicity, what year any song or movie came out, or why I have such a vivid memories of trivial conversations and events that no one else would ever care to remember.  Here’s why:  Most men occupy a good amount of their passion and their memories to sports.  I don’t.  I have to fill it with something.  My passion is writing, and those odd details and stories are the magic stuff of what I write.  If I cared about sports, this website wouldn’t exist, and you would have spent the last couple of minutes doing something else, instead of reading this.  Like watching sports.

Leave a comment Posted on Nostalgia, People, Spirituality, Uncategorized

Good Men Still Exist; They Just Don’t Make the Headlines as Easily

“The handy thing about being a father is that the historic standard has been set so pitifully low.” -Michael Chabon, Manhood for Amateurs

Yes, everyone is well aware that despite all the good men in history who have left a good name for themselves (along with plenty of quotable quotes, with many of them being strong military leaders or respected writers), there are enough deadbeats, scoundrels, and cads to cast a negative connotation on the word “man”.  Women are expected to be saints and givers; sadly, men are expected to be… well, not a lot is expected of men anymore.  But not all good men are long gone.

In the aftermath of Father’s Day last week, the Internet was full of freshly published articles about the modern man, father, and husband.  Two in particular really got my attention.  The first one reviewed the history of TV dads from Leave It to Beaver, to Married with Children, to Parenthood.  It brought out the fact that in the 1950’s, dads were too perfect, in the 1990’s they were often portrayed as bumbling idiots, and now in the 2010’s, TV dads have finally began to look more like real dads.  See http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/37758834/ns/today-entertainment/.  (Though I would argue that the 1980’s were good to TV dads…)

The other article that really got me thinking was one I found on Stuff Christians Like, http://stuffchristianslike.net/2010/06/the-wild-difference-between-a-mothers-day-sermon-and-a-fathers-day-sermon/, which explained how many fathers in Christian churches feel miserable on Father’s Day Sunday because the sermon is about how men need to step up to the plate and be better fathers, while the Mother’s Day sermon provides nothing but praise for women.

I definitely see how good men often don’t get the praise they deserve.  Like Zack Morris once said on Saved by the Bell when Jessie declared that all men are jerks, “Hey, don’t judge us by our worst specimens.”  What can we do to enhance the minority of men who are truly good fathers, husbands, and hard-working citizens?

My guess is to call them out on their goodness when you see it.  It seems that if we as a culture began to celebrate the men who are doing right, it would be more of an incentive for those who are just half-way doing it, seeing there is praise and appreciation for being a “good man”.  But when the goal is simply to be better than Charlie Sheen (both the actual person and his fictionalized character on the totally lame yet successful sitcom Three and Half Men), there’s a certain lack of motivation to become a better man.

In an age where stereotypes of men who are drug to church by their wives end up jumping in a 15 passenger van for a weekend trip to their nearest major sports arena to learn from a former NFL player at a Promise Keepers conference that they should spend more time with their kids instead of watching sports games and that they should share the household responsibilities with their wives and stop looking at pornography on their home computers, then they go back home a changed man for a month, then repeat the process each following year, there are still plenty of men in America who actually already are indulging themselves in being the husbands and fathers they need to be.  There are actually good men in America who don’t have to be reminded to be good.  Because they are already aware of the reward in being a respected man who lives for his family, not himself.

Celebrate the good men in your life.  They may instantly brush aside your compliments or seem embarrassed when you do, but inside it means the world to them.  Of course with good men being the coveted gem in a parking lot full of gravels, my guess is, you already do.