Other things

I have far too much to write for work right now (another manuscript, cover letters, toying with starting my dissertation five months early) to pay this blogge the attention it deserves. If only there were some other team member who could post things here... perhaps about her own pregnancy... I guess no one like that exists. What was I thinking?

Childbirth classes start Thursday evening. I can't even watch surgery on TV. Do you think I'll be watching the video?

You throw like a girl

I had no plans to write about sports, but after the weekend we had the topic seems appropriate. Specifically, I mean girls' sports, because this weekend (for the first time in my nine years [Ed. note: sweet jeebus kill me] of college, mind you) I attended some of what you may call Athletic Competitions Between Squadrons of Female Players. That's right, a women's basketball game and three (count 'em) three softball games. Free student tickets are overflowing with win. I know this is years in the future, and I really should be concerning myself with figuring out how to do things like bathe a baby, or maybe not misplacing her for hours on end, but whatever, this is on my mind and this is my blog.

I found myself thinking that if Girl ends up interested in sports, I am not going to have any clue as to the best way to support her in that endeavor (this falls under the umbrella of "Having a daughter, now what do I do?"). With boys it's easy: you support them athletically [Ed. note: tee hee!] by questioning their toughness and manhood. That fires up their lizard-brain into the "fight" response. Plus, it has the added bonus of teaching them a life-lesson, namely I am the boss and even if you go all Oedipus on me you still lose because dude you just totally married your mom. Case closed, I'll take my commission now. Girls' sports are a completely different beast. Just this weekend I noticed the many contrasts between women's and men's sports. Women:

1) Cheer for each other openly and un-self consciously
2) Don't frequently yell at teammates
3) Don't spit
4) Don't scratch
5) Don't take cheap shots
6) I assume minimally swear
7) Lack an intent to injure

The "Rah rah" attitude is nonexistent in men's sports, where the only acceptable cheering is that which is tagged with an insult, e.g. "Let's go defense, you're getting blown off the ball!" Seriously, do a Google Image search for "girls sports" and the first thing that comes up is a drawing that says "Rah Rah! Go team go!" (Hilariously, the second is two Sports By Brooks girls.) The Florida State softball team started their own Tomahawk Chop - complete with singalong - a couple times this weekend. You think any men's team would cheer like that?


Additionally I had to turn off my normal fan response. During one of the softball games the first basewoman (right, my sistahs?) dropped a throw from short and someone in the stands (a fan of her own team, actually) yelled, "Can we please get a first baseman who can catch the damn ball!" And let me tell you I was shocked. I didn't know you could do that, because they are girls and you are supposed to be nice to them. That's what I always learned. Does it not apply to girls' sports? And if not, how bad are you going to feel if you make them cry? Do you have to apologize? I really don't know. I would have thought the proper reaction would be (WARNING: GROSS OVERGENERALIZATION TO FOLLOW) to immediately freeze up uncomfortably worrying that she would cry after making the error, and then tell her that it's all right, despite the fact that you know you can't give the opposition extra outs. Obligatory Adam Morrison crying picture:


There's no way I could ever be involved with any girls' sports teams. The coaching psychology has to be completely different. Down at halftime, what do you tell your team? From my experience, you yell incoherently about not being tough enough and blah blah blah. I don't think you can do that with a girls' team.

Plus, it's not like I know a single thing about the actual sports that girls play. I am going to guess that the most popular sports for young girls in the U.S. are soccer, basketball, and softball, in that order. To me, those might as well be Calvinball. I played sports specifically where I could play and have a very low chance at actually touching the ball. I touched the ball zero times in four years of football (including the one play where the coach let me play fullback for one down in practice, which was my dream... and oh by the way we ran a sweep to the left against our defensive starters and I sealed our end and the running back busted it for a touchdown but NO BIG DEAL OR ANYTHING COACH). I touched it maybe twice in two (three?) years of lacrosse where I played defense and got a 6' long metal stick and the go-ahead from the rulebook to whack people. Wrestling has no ball. And my season and a half at rugby was a disaster when I played 12 and wing in the backfield, but was surprisingly delightful when I shifted to 6. And what do all of those have in common? Essentially, all my job was was to hit people, and the harder the better. Girls don't do that.


Plus injuries, dear lord the injuries. Girls hurt their knees all the time, despite the fact that they don't injure themselves in other ways by doing dumb alpha-male things, like punching each other while wearing football helmets. I would wager that 100% of female basketball players above the age of 14 tear an ACL. Women's ligaments are made of overcooked spaghetti. Then after they rehab, they'll immediately tear their meniscus. Ariane said something about having never hurt her knees, but I am convinced that she actually shredded them and didn't feel anything because the pain in her ankles from however many surgeries she had overpowered it.

If someone gets hurt, I can't see a girl down on the field and point and laugh like I could if it were a Nebraska football player or such. I can't even look at her and think "Awesome, that was their best player!" I would feel bad - and I don't like that women have successfully managed to mix hypothetical feelings into my sports. The only three feelings that should be associated with sports are a.) rage when you lose reducing to emptiness if the losing is perpetual, b.) contentment when you win (not happiness, though; there's another game next week and you could lose that one), and c.) (for Mizzou fans only) a sick feeling in your stomach wondering why you are losing so badly or on special occasions how you're going to blow the lead you have.

Don't watch this:


Side note: Turns out I love watching softball (at least in person). There is something about stick and ball sports that make them infinitely enjoyable in person and bo-ring on TV. I will be dragging Ariane to softball games now, provided they don't conflict with baseball. I'll also be signing Girl up for this when she's old enough. No soccer for her, soccer is boring.

tl;dr: Girls' sports are weirder than I had previously thought, and I hope my daughter doesn't tear up her knees if she plays anything.

Pregnancy: Completely bizarre, kind of yucky

This is the absolute most important book I have flipped through in a looooooooong time. Every time we have a question, it is answered in this book. Certainly that is to be expected, because 1000 questions is a lot, obviously. However, even in some cases when we don't have a question, but there is something that's just a little bit off from normal, well we look the topic up in the index and sure enough it is covered, in exactly the form the question would have been phrased had we actually bothered to phrase it. It just does not miss. Honestly, it answers too much. I had never heard the word "episiotomy" before I cracked this open, and now I can never unhear it. Have I mentioned I have issues with medical procedures that aren't pills or shots? I cannot stress enough how eerily accurate this book is. It would give Nostradamus a boner, except he would take an entire quatrain to describe it, and it wouldn't be clear what he was talking about, maybe his boner, maybe space travel, maybe Yahtzee.


Honestly, I don't know why the History Channel doesn't devote as much programming as they do to Dr. Thurston as they do to Nostradamus. If not him, can we at least get rid of the Nostradamus garbage and replace it with some more "Universe" programming with Michio Kaku, author of such head-scratchers as Hyperspace, Neil deGrasse Tyson, author of such uplifting spirituals as Death by Black Hole, and Stephen Hawking, who (as we all know) is made of Legos?


There are obvious changes, morning sickness early on, being extremely tired for a few weeks, aches and pains and so forth. Some things have been bizarre. For example, Ariane never really snored. Once every couple of weeks I'd have to nudge her, but then it would end. Now? Every night, almost every way she can lie. This is normal for pregnant women, according to the book. I never would have guessed that. Never. The most bizarre, I think, is that her gums bleed. Every time she flosses. Severely. The first time it happened, she asked me if I had any idea what happened, which I naturally didn't, so she went and opened her book. Initially, I scoffed, said there's no way that the two are related, and it's not going to be in that book. And of course I was wrong. Pregnancy increases blood flow to soft tissue, which makes gums bleed more.

It's not like I needed more to add to the list of "Reasons I am happy to be a guy." Severely bloody gums ranks somewhere above being able to scratch my balls in public without thinking twice. But I mention this now because it nicely sets up this story from last night. I was in the shower, minding my own bidness, carefully doing my weekly shave, when Ariane walked in to floss and brush. (On a side note, she flosses after she brushes which I am opposed to 100%.) As she was flossing she mentioned that she was amazed how much blood there was. It went exactly like this (which actually happened):

Ariane: There is so much blood it's unbelievable!
Me: I know.
Ariane: You should look at this.
Me: That's OK. I've seen it before. It's a lot. I know.
Ariane: [pulls back shower curtain, spits heaping mouthful of blood and saliva onto the bottom of the tub] See what I mean?
Me: Thanks for that.

How many more months?

Edit (8:58 PM): Ariane spazzed and corrected me on her floss/brush order. That's right, spazzed. She gets one correction per post, so the claim of spazzing out will forever stand.