I was going to write about gay marriage today but I have more important things on my mind this morning.
Many, many years ago - back in my middle school days - I was having some problems with certain folks in my school. One night I lamented to my father that I wish I could just move a way to a new town.
My dad - never one to sugar coat things - looked at me and said, "Well, you can move but you take yourself with you."
Ouch.
He was trying to say that I might need to look at myself in the mirror to figure out why I was struggling at that moment in my life.
Stephen Ross, the owner of my Miami Dolphins, could have used my dad yesterday.
The photo above is of the new Miami Dolphins logo - their seventh since September 1966 (the same month and year I was born, ironically..).
I hate this logo.
In a rare moment of free time last month I actually wrote the owner of the Dolphins a letter - telling him that if the rumors of a logo change were true he should defer to the design the Dolphins wore back when they actually won Super Bowls.
He did not take my advice.
Now, the Dolphins will run onto the field this fall with this awful design on their helmets.
My wife would claim that I am just really old-fashioned. O.K., what is wrong with that? Just because I prefer VCR's do DVD, don't own a cell phone, don't have a Twitter account, don't use Facebook and watch movies made, on average, 73 years ago does not mean I am somehow a young "old man".
I just don't like change - especially when it involves my sports teams.
My dad would have told the Dolphins leadership that a new logo will not impact their ability to catch passes, make tackles or look like something more than a joke this fall. He would have told them that they can change logos but they will take themselves - and their losing ways - with them. No disguise will mask their lousy play. No new uniforms will cover up their poor coaching.
It is too bad they did not call him up. He could have set them straight while adding, "Now my stupid son is going to complain all season as if any of this really matters....."
I think your dad is a very wise man....
ReplyDeleteI wonder if your dad was/is a fan of Ernest Hemingway. Here is a line from "The Sun Also Rises" that sounds so much like his advice to you in junior high school:
ReplyDelete“Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.”
Adds a little literary highbrow to the conversation, don't you think? What about you? What do you think of Hemingway?