Childlike glee marks first trip to an NFL game

Childlike glee marks first trip to an NFL game

David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 10.09.2007
You want your proudest moments as a parent to be something really meaningful.
You want your child to give the valedictorian’s speech at her graduation. You hope to see your boy pick up the Nobel Prize. It’d be great to see the twins work together to develop a cure for cancer.
So I’m a little embarrassed to say I’ve never been prouder of our 6-year-old daughter, Lissie, than I was when she attended her first NFL game.
She is deeply interested in “Brian.” Brian, as in Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher, is a one-name wonder in our house.
When Chicago went to the Super Bowl last season, we threw a party for the occasion. To Lissie, it was a birthday party for Brian.
When the Bears lost the Super Bowl last season, one of my wife’s co-workers gave us tissues so we could cry afterward. To Lissie, only Brian could cry with those.
When my wife and I each wore Urlacher jerseys on a recent Sunday, Lissie complained that she didn’t have one. She harassed us until she received an Urlacher jersey of her own.
Whenever the Bears are on television, she complains if the offense is on the field, since it means Brian’s on the sideline. Fortunately for her, the Bears’ offense doesn’t stay on the field very long these days.
She even told some friends at school that Brian’s her cousin. He’s not, by the way.
So when we had a chance to see a Bears game in Detroit last weekend, we knew we had to bring Brian’s biggest fan to Ford Field.
I never really envisioned taking a little girl to her first Bears game. I assumed it’d be a son. Call it a stereotype, but it’s one tried and true. I grew up with five sisters, and only one of them ever watched much football. Since I’m outnumbered three to one by women in my house, I’ll take whatever football fans I can get.
No one would ever describe me as a passionate man. I’m generally reserved and collected. I have a very laid-back way about me. Pro football is my one outlet. My wife once joked I get more excited about the Bears’ season than I did at our wedding or the birth of our newest child. In my defense, I would’ve yelled at those events if they were on a big-screen TV.
I couldn’t really figure out what Lissie thought about her first NFL game at first. She was unusually quiet. She looked around a lot but never commented on anything she saw. The noise levels seemed to unnerve her as the teams ran onto the field.
Then the Bears ran onto the field. She started jumping up and down, pointing at No. 54 and yelling, “There’s Brian! There’s Brian!” You would’ve thought Hannah Montana herself walked out of the tunnel.
She resumed her silence during the game. By the end of halftime, I was convinced she was bored out of her mind. We figured she would be, so my wife planned to take her for a walk around the concourses at the beginning of the third quarter to restock our snack supply. We’d assumed Lissie would jump at the opportunity to walk around.
That’s when she surprised us both.
“I want to stay here with Daddy and watch the game,” she said.
That was her valedictory speech, Nobel Prize and cure for cancer all wrapped into one for me. As my wife wandered away, Lissie sat on my knee and watched the game with me.
We didn’t talk much. We just watched the game unfold in front of us. I didn’t want to ruin the moment by complaining about a run up the middle on third-and-long or how the quarterbacks should stop throwing the ball to the other team in the end zone.
On the way out of Ford Field, she did something no self-respecting fan would do. Or maybe she did something every self-respecting fan should do. She waved at all the Lions fans who taunted her for wearing Brian’s No. 54 into their den. And she smiled.
I’m seeing in her the kind of passion for football and fairness that would make Brian proud. I know it made me proud.

What it means to be an American in a post 9/11 world

What it means to be an American in a post 9/11 world
mailto:dtrinko@limanews.com- 09.11.2007

I’m not a true American like I was on Sept. 11, 2001, as it turns out.
You probably aren’t either, depending on who’s labeling you.
As we mark the anniversary of the deadly terrorist hijackings that put airplanes into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, this idea of “true American” seems to be on trial. Different juries offer differing verdicts.
One side argues you can’t be a true American if you’re not supporting our troops. Whatever the endeavor, we must support our troops’ continuing missions.
Another side argues you can’t be a true American unless you put the needs of families ahead of all others. If you love America, you want American soldiers to come home.
Both sides tend to throw ridiculous labels at one another, saying you’re a gun-toting conservative or give-peace-a-chance liberal.
More than anything else, they like to say they’re a true American, and anyone who disagrees is un-American or, worse yet, anti-American.
It’s this unwillingness to even listen to another side that makes me question if anyone’s a true American anymore. It seems so un-American to adopt a “my way or the highway” attitude toward anything.
You’re not entitled to your opinion the same way you were before the towers fell. You can’t disagree with the government like you did before the plane plunged into the Pentagon walls. You’re not supposed to show your dissent like you could before those heroic passengers guided that fourth plane away from its extremist mission and into the field.
I think I’m still just as much of a true American as I was on Sept. 11, 2001. I still love God, my mom and apple pie, just the same as I ever did.
You probably feel the same way. More than likely, we all do.
But that’s just not the message we seem to hear nowadays.
We’ve become less open to hearing opposing viewpoints. We’ve become more intolerant to those who think differently than we do. We’ve begun lobbing people into groups, saying their opinions don’t count if they don’t have some arbitrary opinion in common with ours.
I heard that recently from a caller who obviously disagreed with an editorial decision we’d made. He asked me if I’d served in the military. When I told him no, he blew up into a tirade about being a fat, happy liberal sitting in my comfy chair, making decisions that ruined people’s lives.
Truth be told, my chair’s not that comfortable. And most of the rest of his characterizations were off the mark too. They lacked some nuance we would’ve demanded before the terrorist attacks.
On this, the sixth anniversary of those attacks, I’ll stop for a moment of silence this morning to think about what happened, just like I have every year since it happened. I’ll think of the wasted lives who committed no crime that day, people whose only sins were to live in America and go to work that day.
I’ll pray for them and their families. I’ll also implore God to help this country remember that our differences bind us just as much as our similarities. Our disagreements are our strength. Our dialogue is our power.
That’s what makes each of us a true American.

Life’s biggest challenge is doing the little things

Life’s biggest challenge is doing the little things
David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 09.07.2007
There’s a safety pin in a urinal at the office.
I’m not sure why it rests in the toilet water there or how it hasn’t flushed down the drain. I don’t know why it remains there at least six months after it arrived.
I take that second part back. I know why it’s remained; no one wants to reach into the toilet water to retrieve it and throw it away.
It really wouldn’t be that difficult for me to pick it out and toss it in the garbage can. I could wash my hands thoroughly afterward. It wouldn’t be that difficult for someone else to do it either. Yet it remains there, and the only time I think about it is when I’m doing what you do in front of a urinal.
Recently I realized how many safety pins are in the urinals of my life.
They’re these simply solved problems that never get addressed. They seem hardly worth the effort, but they bother you over time. You waste hours thinking, “I should work on that some day.”
Some just take some elbow grease. For instance, I like to keep copies of old bills. I have a good filing system, but I’m not always good at keeping up with it. If I file a bill as soon as I pay it, there’d be no hard work to it. Instead, I tend to grow piles of bills and have to take an hour to file three months’ worth of old bills. These piles of bills grow around the floor in my home office.
Others are changing your habits. We go out to eat way too often, especially considering everyone in our house save the newborn baby is a decent cook. There’s a stocked freezer and cupboard. The food’s not always that great when you hit a fast-food place, and the atmosphere will never rival gathering around our dinner table.
Another safety pin is my personal fitness. I’m fairly healthy, but I could take better care of myself. I’m not sure I like the looks of doubt when I tell people I weighed 140 pounds my senior year of high school. I could easily spend 15 minutes a day using those weights I’ve lugged from town to town over the last 10 years.
My e-mail habits are bad. I’ll receive e-mail and file it away until I have time to write a good answer. Then it may be weeks before I respond to a dear friend from college. Real friends don’t wait months before answering e-mail.
I should do more to live my faith. It’s good to go to church and try to take what you learn into your everyday life. It’s better to go out, volunteer and share your gifts with others.
I don’t see my parents enough. I moved back to Ohio to spend more time with them, yet I might not see them for a month or two in a row. I really should make that 40-minute trip at least once a month.
I should tell more people that I love them. Sure, they should know by my actions. It never hurts to say it though, and there are few things in life as sweet as hearing it.
Sometimes the easiest things to change in life become the hardest ones to do.
I seriously doubt I’ll put my hand into the urinal anytime soon. Maybe it’s best that it stays there as a reminder of all of these other safety pins in the urinals of life that need just one thing: action.