It's All About the Child

The late, great Jim Dykes once told me "I like your column but you need to get off that (expletive deleted) bike fetish."  In other words, I write about the bicycle a little too often.

So every time I start to tell you more about the bicycle or how wonderful it is to ride around here, I stop and ask myself if I'm violating Mr. Dykes revered admonition.   Sometimes, if the story is too good not to be told, I forge ahead anyway.  But generally, I stop and write about something else.

Jim Dykes, if you don't remember, was a long-time newspaperman in these parts.  His column in the old Knoxville Journal was one of the funniest and smartest tomes you will find.  His compliment (I took it as such) was maybe the greatest day in my life as a columnist.

If you've been reading, you know that I'm now a grandad.  Six times over, even.   7, 6, 4, 3, 2, and 7 months.  We are blessed that all six live in Blount County.   I can't imagine what it would be like for them to be half way across the country or, like my buddy Steve, half a world away. 

I've heard many a grandparent confess that if they knew that grandchildren were going to be this good, they would have skipped kids and gone straight to grandkids. It really is that good.  However, I really enjoyed my own children too much to say that but my wife-oh my goodness-she loves those babies.  Heaven is an infant in her arms.

In the next few years you might get tired of hearing about my grandkids, just like Jim Dykes was tired of reading about my bicycle.   Maybe Rhetta Grimsley-Johnson (my other favorite columnist) will be the one to tell me to back off on grandkid stories.

But as with everything I write, there is always a message.  Self-proclaimed as "preachy," I do always try and be a teacher (my first profession) here.  

Anyway, while attending soccer games for the three oldest last Saturday, watching my kids and all the others out there, I found myself stepping back and looking at things differently.   I mentioned that a couple of weeks ago.

There seemed to be as many grandparents out there as there were parents.   I can tell you that the grandparents were generally better behaved than the parents (did I really yell at the referees back then?) but then and now, the kids just wanted to play.  

At 7,6, and 4, they really didn't care what the score was at the end of the game.  I'm pretty sure no athletic careers were being etched in stone out there on a blustery morning on Everett Hill but you might have thought otherwise had you been there.

What I saw out there were kids running around and having fun.   Some took it more seriously than others and sure, some were better than others.   But each of them "needed" to be out there, sometimes for very different reasons.

 And what I came to realize most clearly was that every child deserves to feel special.  Mine, yours, every single one of them.  Because they are. 

So when I'm faced with the decision of riding bicycles on these glorious roads and trails we have around here with my buddies or watching grandkids play soccer, you're going to find me shivering on the sidelines.