Monday, September 22, 2014
Good morning,
I’m always on the look out for my next Monday Morning Coffee. I’m never quite sure where it will come from, but as I engage in life, and people, it is a gift when one just happens to land in the palm of my hand. This mornings’ story is one of those, and I thank Gene for giving me permission to share it with my readers. No doubt you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed listening to it.
Those of you that know me know that my husband Randy officiates college football for the Big XII Conference. He happened to be officiating a game in Texas and I joined him and his crew to travel to the game. We caravanned in several cars to get to our destination and I jumped in the back seat of my husband’s truck with the side judge, Gene. Gene is a very high-powered divorce attorney and has more stories that can fill a 3 hour car ride (and he always changes the names to protect the innocent!) But no worries, this is not a boring story about a fighting divorced couple he represented, but we did get a few laughs out of some of his stories.
The conversation turned from work to family, as I always like to know what people do when they are not at the office or on the football field, and with much pride in his voice, Gene began talking about his two sons, Jason and Jeremy, and out came the IPhone with pictures (he did throw in a picture of his lovely wife as well!) I asked if his sons had followed in his footsteps and went to law school and he laughed and said no. His oldest Jeremy graduated from Duke summa cum laude, and his youngest, Jason, did his undergraduate work at the University of Texas and is working on his PHD in Math. Gene proceeded to open his IPad and show me Jeremy’s dissertation (which looked much like a foreign language to me!)
Gene then told me a story. Gene coached basketball for his older son, Jason, when he was in middle school and at one point the coaches asked him if they thought they should coach again the next year for the upcoming kids. Well, Gene’s second son, Jeremy, happened to be coming up in the next class and Gene said, well I don’t know, let’s give them a try. So after practice that day, Gene got all the kids on the court who would be playing the next year, basically to see if they were any good and if they would have a team the next year. They split them up and had one team be “shirts” and the other be “skins”. They played, the coaches observed and then everyone left with little conversation. When Gene and his son were going home Jeremy asked, “Dad, do I have to play basketball”. Gene thought about it for a minute. He never wanted to force his kids to do anything they didn’t want to and he said “no” and his son said, good, because I don’t want to. And Gene said ok, then you don’t have to. Gene was a little disappointed because his son was actually one of the better players, but that was that.
So life went on, and when Jason finished his undergraduate degree from Texas, proud papa Gene asked him on graduation day the question that all parents want to know, “So Jason, how did I do as a parent?”, and his son replied “pretty good dad” and Gene wanted to know if there was anything that he could have done differently. His son said no, and went on to recall the story of the basketball game from years and years ago and Gene recalled it. His son said he was scared to death that his dad was going to make him play and he was really nervous and afraid to tell his dad he didn’t want to play. And Gene said he never knew that, but he wasn’t going to make him ever do anything he didn’t want to. And his son said, “dad, do you know why I didn’t want to play basketball”, and Gene said, “no, son, but it didn’t matter,” and his son said, “dad, I didn’t want to play if I had to play without a shirt on!”
How much does what we don’t know matter?