It all begins harmlessly enough -- a toddler dressed up as a cute pumpkin as he shyly asks neighbors for treats. Soon, little Johnny's wearing a pirate costume and intimidating smaller children into giving up their candy. Next, Johnny is flinging toilet paper through the trees of the neighborhood crusty curmudgeon's yard. As a young man, Johnny is leading a cult and sacrificing goats in a clearing in the woods while chanting Satanic curses!

Finally, Johnny adopts a sinister nom de guerre, hatches plans to conquer the world, and kills people using sharks with frickin' laser beams!

And it all began with a Tootsie Roll.

What an awesome job! What an appropriate song.

Free Bird!

When you teach your son, you teach your son's son.  ~The Talmud

Since Fathers' Day, I've been thinking a good bit about my fatherhood and my relationship with my 12-year-old son. He and I usually run jog together in the mornings, but he has been unable to join me the last couple of days. As a result, I've had some thinking time during my solo workouts.

What are the life lessons I would like for my son to learn from me? What can I teach him to truly help him get a running start towards maximizing his amazing potential?

1. Take responsibility for your actions. Don't shift blame. Be truthful. Don't give excuses. In the end, effort matters somewhat but performance is what really counts. Be a stand-up guy on which others can depend.
2. Be a creator. The world is full of takers with a sense of entitlement. Don't wait to be told what needs to be done. Search out opportunities to fill needs and create value.
3. Be a positive thinker. The world is full of naysayers. Complaining is pointless. Worrying solves nothing. Your attitude shapes your reality. Don't let you be the limiting factor on realizing your potential. Dream big and know that your dreams are possible.
   • As a corollary to positive thinking, push your envelope. Make it a habit to go outside your comfort zone. The person that lifts the same weight for the same number of repetitions every day, never grows stronger. Make sure you're straining a bit. Don't be afraid to fail. Increase your capabilities.
4. Be true to yourself. Don't fall prey to peer pressure. Don't be a sheep. Think for yourself. Don't be afraid to be different and to stand out from the crowd. And always follow your moral compass.
5. Have fun. Life is indeed short. Don't make it all seriousness and no fun -- that makes Jack a dull boy. Notice the absurdities and relish the ironies. Laugh often. Play hard. Love a lot.

Now if only I could learn these lessons.

...Physician, heal thyself... --Luke 4:23

Props to Mr. Miyagi.

Tuesday night, my son was alone at home for about an hour. Apparently he saw an news story about the tragic death of Michael Downing who accidentally stabbed himself through the heart while cooking lunch for his sons.

You may be able to see where this is going.

So, my wife came home Tuesday evening to find our son sprawled in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor with a knife laying on the floor beside him.

Luckily for both of them, she immediately spotted the tube of fake blood (left over from Halloween) laying on the floor also.

I can't imagine where he gets his humor.

If quizzes are quizzical, what are tests?

When she was featured on 60 Minutes however, questions were raised about whether she actually did all the painting. A child psychologist, Ellen Winner, who has studied gifted children and specializes in visual arts studied the paintings and videos of Marla painting, has grave reservations about whether Marla is the artistic force behind the paintings. According to Winner, videos of Marla show an young girl painting in the manner of ordinary young children, essentially pushing the paint around, playing and experimenting with the paint. Prodigies exhibit a feverish "rage to master", working with an intense focus and drive. In addition, Winner says, “I have never seen a child prodigy paint in art abstractly. I’ve only seen them paint realistically or representationally. I have a drawing of Picasso at age 9. It shows that Picasso was struggling to draw realistically, and he was way ahead of his age."

So, who is the artist doing the paintings for which people are paying many thousands of dollars? Some people think it's her father, an amateur artist who is present when she paints. Her parents, of course, dispute the accusation. They say that while the father does help Marla by priming her canvases, she does all of the painting. The only help they provide Marla is love and encouragement. The 60 Minutes reporter says that while he has a hard time believing Marla created these paintings, he also believes her parents are good people and wouldn't use their little girl to deceive the world.

So which is it? Are Marla's parents horrible monsters using an innocent little girl to commit fraud on the art world? Or, in a "the nail that sticks up is the one that gets beaten down" scenario, is the world so coldly cynical that it cannot accept the explosion of a extraordinary talent in one so young? Either way, the situation is a somewhat sad commentary.

I know that the truth will eventually win out, and that I, for one, hope there is indeed a superlative new artist in the making.

I have a vice of absolutely loving good coffee so I'm familar with Starbucks' The Way I See It campaign, which is, in their words

a collection of thoughts, opinions and expressions provided by notable figures that now appear on our widely shared cups.

And I admit, I've seen more than my fair share of Starbucks' cups. The cup I received yesterday had the following thought on it.

The Way I See It #252
Give me world politics, gender politics, party politics or small-town politics ... I'll take them all over the politics of youth sports.

Brenda Stonecipher
City council member and Starbucks customer in Everett, Washington.

This cup's communiqué conveyed a colossal conjunction of coincidence (I couldn't resist the alliteration). My son's football team has been the stage for truly ugly politics this season.

Before I begin truly ranting, let me say that all of the coaches in his league are purely volunteers and --having been a youth sport coach myself-- I applaud them for their huge commitments of time and energy to what is largely a thankless job.

OK, now let the rant begin.

My son plays football in a league for 11-13 year olds; his team is a brand new, expansion team in the league. Before the season, all new players participated in workouts so that the coaches could grade them. The coaches then held a draft, allotting new players to each team. Normally, this would be a fair system.

But it's not.

First, unlike any of the other youth sports leagues, it turns out that most of the football coaches are also on the board of the football league; therefore, they make their own rules and guard their own henhouse. Second, the best kids are quickly earmarked by some of the coaches, pulled from the tryouts, and quickly assigned to the coach's team -- many times without the knowledge of the other coaches. Third, the expansion team had to fill their roster completely from the tryouts. The team is predominantly 11 year old boys; only 4 or 5 of the boys are older than 11. A better method would have been to randomly pull a few players from each existing team and put them back into the draft.

The result is that the competitive inequities in the league are staggering. My son's team began their season by playing the three best teams in the league in their first 4 games. Despite good coaching, my son's team suffered serious beatdowns in those games. And the natives parents were getting restless.

The kettle boiled over during the 4th game of the season when we played the team coached by the president of the league; he's also apparently one of the worst offenders in regards to stacking his team. His boys were huge, fast, and mean; our boys were taking a beating. At the beginning of the second quarter, our running back was cleanly slobberknocked. He was knocked unconscious for a few moments and when he regained consciousness, he reported that his neck hurt and he was numb and couldn't move! Emergency personnel were quickly on the scene and the boy was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Yes, he ended up being OK -- turns out he received a stinger.

While the injured player was being tended by coaches and emergency personnel, some of the parents began loudly denouncing the inequities in the league. Without input from other parents, they swiftly decided and informed the coach that the team parents did not wish the game to continue. Their dissatisfaction quickly flamed into outrage and they took up torches and pitchforks to become a mini-mob. Now they spiraled out of control to the point that a policeman firmly commanded them to calm down. Their calm lasted only a few moments and only because the injured boy was taken off the field in an ambulance at that moment.

Then the opposing team's coach, who is also the president of the league, ill-advisedly decided to confront the mob. And the keyword there is confront. He was already the focus of the mob's anger and when he confronted everyone with a "write down your issues and we'll address it at the board" attitude, tempers really flared. Some parents were screaming epithets at him. Meanwhile the teams had been dismissed and were wandering around with shocked and scared looks on their faces. The boys were already scared and upset because their teammate had just been carted off the field in an ambulance, and now they were witnessing their parents in a mob situation. It was a sickening disgrace; I quickly grabbed my son and left the field.

A parents' meeting was convened the next night with all sorts of allegations made against the league board and the president in particular. The upshot of the whole meeting was that three representatives would take up the matter with the county commission, specifically to change the league structure so that coaches cannot serve on the board. We'll see how that goes. I used the meeting to chastise the parents that lost control at the game and told them how shamefully I thought they acted in front of the boys; I actually got a few amens and some applause for those comments.

Despite the parents' bad behavior, they do have a point; some of the coaches do stack their teams and it does create a safety issue for a team composed of young, inexperienced players. Competitive inequities exist at all levels of sport, but it's disturbing to think that men who volunteer their time to coach football would essentially cheat to win. Does it stroke their egos? It smells like a person that sets a video game's difficulty to novice level, and then puffs out their chest because they beat the game.

I know it's not the type of person I want my son to learn from or emulate.