Welcome to the latest installment in VolunteerSpot's blog series Views on Back-to-School! VolunteerSpot is honored to be featuring guest posts from our favorite bloggers about what back-to-school means for them. Please welcome Clay Nichols of DadLabs, awesome webisodes and resources for expecting, new and veteran fathers launching them into a more active and creative role in the lives of their children. Today, Clay shares how the significance of football season starting up has changed since his son has become one of the players. Thanks Clay!
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Line of Scrimmage
By Clay Nichols
The crisscrossing scars on my right knee tingle as I watch my son walk out onto a football field wearing full pads for the first time. It’s just a scrimmage. But wasn’t it “just a scrimmage” in 8th grade when I snapped my thumb?
Fall is here. Time again to fill young brains with facts and figures, then concuss them.
Which is to say that I feel a bit ambivalent about the beginning of school, specifically the attendant start of school sports. Ambivalent? You snort derisively. How could a guy that budgets every minute of his free time to ferrying his three kids to various practices and games be ambivalent?
Easy.
I sold my soul to club soccer (yet still owe them $200 a month somehow), but that doesn’t mean I don’t wish I could renegotiate. And fall is the time to do it. Didn’t the summer teach us the value of free time, unstructured play and downtime? Then why are my kids having hoagies in the backseat of the minivan, dripping mustard on the Global Studies homework en route to the Soccer Compound on the back side of suburban nowhere?
Summer, it’s time to beef up the curriculum. Your scores are coming in below standards.
Now it is fall. In Texas. So there is a very specific reckoning for our family as we return to school this year. Football has lumbered our lives like a nose tackle at a garden party. Soccer, like summer, has tried to teach us lessons: that competitive sports can be life sports, that sports talk can be a global conversation, but like summer, soccer is no match for fall and her brand of ball.
Fortunately for me, my son is a bit ambiguous towards the return of school and the appearance of football, too. He’s listened to me rant about the dangers of the game, describe the knee reconstructions, recount injury statistics (I know, I know, soccer is bad, too.), but he’s also been watching me. And I do watch football. He’s also been listening to coaches. They said it would be fun, and I conceded that was indeed true.
So for my son (and for me) the return to school means football for the first time. It makes this fall seem exciting and a little dangerous, with raised stakes somehow, more grown up in both a good and a bad way. Football is liminal. So is being 12, I guess.
My son takes his stance. I hold my breath.
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Clay Nichols is father to Wilson (12), Riley (9), Cooper (6), husband to
Kim, and a resident of Austin, Texas. Additionally, he’s a co-founder and
Chief Creative Officer at DadLabs, producer of one of the longest running and
popular web shows on the internet. With over 550 episodes in release,
DadLabs covers all aspects of parenting, from a distinctly male point of view.
Nichols is co-author of “Filmmaking for Teens: Pulling Off
Your Shorts” (MWP) now in its second edition, “DadLabs Guide to Fatherhood:
Pregnancy and Year One” (Quirk Books), over a dozen plays, feature articles for
a variety of newspapers and magazines, and a regular column for Austin Family
Magazine.
