Grant is five practices into spring football. The schedule is to practice Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, then have film and team meetings Wednesday, Friday, and Monday. Both practices and meetings start at 4:30 pm Eastern. So imagine my surprise when I am wrapping up work today at 5:15 pm, and I get this message from Grant:
Grant: Hey dad I love you.
Ummmm . . .
Understand, we don’t suppress feelings around here. Every night, we text our kids good night and tell them we love them. They respond in kind. We’re free with saying I love you.
But it was 5:15 pm, and Grant was supposed to be in film study critiquing his performance from the previous practice. So here’s my response.
Me: You ok? Aren’t you in a meeting?
I would learn over dinner that Lauren also got a random I love you text at the same time. It disturbed her so much that she got on Find My Phone to make sure Grant wasn’t standing on a bridge or next to a river bank or on train tracks. Nope. He was at the football center.
Finally, Grant replied.
Grant: Coach Cole told us to text our parents that. Ha ha.
Me: Ok. Love you too. Tell him your dad thought someone stole your phone.
Which is what i was thinking. I wasn’t worried about bridges—I was more concerned that some teammates had snagged his phone and was trying to induce some kind of cheesy conversation between us so that they could plaster it across the locker room and social media. Interesting my fears versus Lauren’s.
Later in the evening, as Lauren and I were finishing dinner and Grant was leaving the football facilities, he clarified.
Grant: Ok haha. Cole asks us every meeting if we talk with our families and he told all of us to text those we love.
Finally, this evening, we got even more context. Bucknell went into lockdown during part of the day when an active shooter threat was called in. The call turned out to be a hoax, but we imagine that it was yet more inspiration for coaches to say, “Check in with your loved ones.” With Grant, though, context is often missing. Which I guess is also true of many kids.
Speaking of out of context, Lindsay joined Carson and his family in Pennsylvania for the Easter weekend, and partway through the evening, we got this random photo from her.
Why? Lauren had captured some photos of Dobby playing with me the other night, and one of those looked pretty ferocious. Carson is on a mission to be best friends with Dobby, and imitation is the highest form of flattery. So for clarity, here’s a comparison.
Dobby, however, is unimpressed.
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