A quick DST story

For those of you who listened to our show last night (thanks!), this will be old hat.  Sorry, feel free to move on.  But for the larger majority of you who didn't listen to the show (grrr!), it should be as fresh as the sweet mountain air.  Ahem.

So this past weekend was Daylight Savings Time here in the U.S. of A.  Stupid friggin' tradition that needs to be eliminated, if you ask me.  But there it is.  At 2AM on Sunday morning we all dutifully turn our clocks ahead an hour because that's what we've always done.  Or we let our more advanced technology like cell phones or computers or DVRs change the time themselves.  We are benevolent human dictators like that.

But everyone probably has a manual clock or two at home that needs to be spun ahead 1 hour.  And it's inevitable that some clocks suffer the fate of not getting spun ahead for days or weeks, depending on whether you use them often or not.  It happens.  Then someone points it out to you and you feel stupid before fixing it.  I delight in being the asshole who points it out, I have to admit.

So I'm at my sister's house for a birthday party on Sunday when I notice that their wall clock in the living room had been neglected.  I, being that asshole who points this stuff out to folks, tell my nephew, an utterly brilliant college kid in many aspects of life, so that he could change it.

He takes it off the wall, takes a half-second peek at the back of the mechanism and declares that it's too complicated for him and he hangs it back up on the wall.  Seriously.  There was NO WAY he could have processed what he saw in that time-frame, but whatever.  He said it was too complicated to attempt.

Whoa, whoa, whoa!  Too complicated?  I gotta see this.  So I take it off the wall, and it's the same battery-run clock mechanism that we've all seen for decades now.  Something like this, if you aren't sure what I mean.  A battery and a wheel to set the time.  That's it.  Which I did.  Very easily, mind you.  And this kid is much, much smarter than I.  Ahem.

I don't know.  Kids these days can figure out how to sync their mobile phone to their email accounts to their Facebook page to the chip implant in their skulls in a matter of seconds.  But turning a wheel one rotation to change the time on a manual clock...

I fear for the human race once Skynet becomes aware and our youth are forced to handle tasks manually.  That's all I'm saying.

PS - But seriously, he's a great kid.

The Ike Special

There's a saying that goes a little something like "Sports don't build character, they reveal it."  I'm not sure I totally believe that.  Sports definitely has the possibility to bring out the best in some people.  It's also been known to bring out the worst in others.  But as a general rule of thumb, I think it works.  Especially when talking about kids and organized team sports.

Case in point. Ike Ditzenberger is a 17-year old high-school junior who loves football. Playing for his high school team like his older brothers before him. And despite his physical limitations, he practices with the junior varsity and varsity squads every day and he always finds a way to score. His coach has drawn up a play that guarantees it. Every time.

Did I mention that Ike has Down Syndrome?

For the last play of each practice, Ike gets to score a touchdown with the varsity team. As long as he keeps his pads on and his mouthpiece in, his coach will call his number for his very own offensive play. The Ike Special.

And this past week, with a little help from the defense on the opposing team, Ike scored a last second touchdown on a 51-yard ramble to the end zone. The other team was up 35-0 with 10 seconds left when Ike's play and number was called, so yeah...they let the guy have his moment.  And it was Ike's very first career varsity score.  A very big moment for him.  I say hurrah for the kids and coaches of that other team.  It showed a lot of sportsmanship.

Some critics believe that there is no place in sports for this kind of thing.  That no one should ever "allow" a play like this to happen.  I disagree.  It think it was wonderful.

Watch...

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