Football for beginners

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I never cared much for football. It was a lot of running and snorting and stamping, and I didn't understand the rules anyway.

 

 

Partner has tried, very patiently, for very many years, to teach me the game. No soap. I used to think I had some kind of mental block that prevented me from learning this stuff; I still think, for example, that a “safety” is when one of the players runs backward.

 

 

Then I hired a member of the university football team to work for me in the office.

 

 

Bingo!

 

 

He was not only huge, but funny and articulate. I asked him what position he played, and he was insightful enough to know that if he'd said “offensive lineman,” I would have been as unenlightened as ever. So he said: “I push people around.”

 

 

Now that I understand.

 

 

He spoke with passion about the phases of his training: strength, speed, agility. I was, naturally, enthralled.

 

 

So now, naturally, I am much more taken by football than I was before.

 

 

Now I see in the New York Times that various teams – mostly college teams, apparently – are redesigning their uniforms to be more colorful, and interesting, and eye-catching.

 

 

So what audience are they aiming this at? The old traditional fans?

 

 

I don't think so!

 

 

They're aiming it at people like me!

 

 

And, just so you know: my former employee's team won their first game of the season, by one point!

 

 

Yay team!

 

 

I hope they win the Stanley Cup!

 

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Student fads: hookahs, porkpie hats, and ukuleles

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I work on a college campus, so every year is a fascinating adventure into hipness. What will college students be doing / wearing / eating this year? Hoop skirts? Viking helmets? Fright wigs?

 

 

Actually, this year, it seems pretty sedate to me. “It looks,” I said to the shuttle driver the other evening, “like it did when I first came here in 1978. I guess the wheel has finally turned all the way around.”

 

 

He snorted a laugh. “Did they have blue hair back then?” he said, nodding toward a girl on the sidewalk nearby. “I don't think so.”

 

 

Well, he was right about that. There are always changes and aberrations. But if you'd shown me a photo in 1978 of what the average student is wearing in 2011, I would have shrugged. What's so different about that?

 

 

College students are very attentive to trends. I remember Bullwinkle when he went to Wossamotta U.: “I've got my raccoon coat!” he said. “I've got my ukulooloo and my hair stickum!”

 

 

(Yes, he said “ukulooloo.” I can hear it in my head even now.)

 

 

But modern college students look very similar to the way we looked back in the 1970s: simple, black t-shirts, jeans, floppy hair. 

 

 

But Shuttle Driver was right: there are some differences.

 

 

There is, for example, the Ironic Porkpie Hat.

 

 

A few years ago, all the boys (or at least the cool ones) were wearing classic porkpie hats. It was a little odd, but certainly no odder than the lime-green leisure suit I bought in Spokane in 1977.

 

 

Now they've moved beyond the conventional porkpie. They've actually become post-modern about it.

 

 

Today I saw a white porkpie hat. And a straw porkpie hat. And a flannel one, with a little flourish of feathers, like a Tyrolean hat!

 

 

And have I mentioned the proliferation of hookah cafes in the neighborhood? That, at least, was not something we did in the primitive nineteen-seventies.

 

 

Ah, youth! What next?

 

 

(For us, it was disco music!)

 

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Student employees

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I posted some student jobs recently, and have been reading the applications. I am bemused, as always.

Some thoughts:

• I would describe myself in a lot of different ways, but not as “ebullient.” God knows I'm not ebullient, but even if I were, I would be shy of applying the word to myself.
• Ditto “gregarious.” There are a lot of ways of saying this: “I'm a people person.” “I work well with others.” For me, “gregarious” connotes a large hearty man in a tweed jacket at a New Year's Eve party, his arms around his friends, singing “Auld Lang Syne.”
• “I have awesome skills.” As do we all. To me, it's awesome that I actually wake up alive and conscious every morning. But the phrase “awesome skills” better describes a ninja than a college sophomore.
• “Affable.” Affable? Are you eighty years old? Do you belong to the Explorers' Club?
• “I have experience with a wide variety of people and computers.” Really! And were the computers nice?
• Best of all: “I make acute observations and have unique thoughts.” Hmm. Dorothy Parker? The Cumaean Sibyl? The Unabomber?

I may actually bring Awesome Skills into the office for an interview. One of the positions is largely customer-service: answering phones, greeting guests. And sometimes, a cheerfully over-the-top student is just the ticket to disarm a grumpy caller.

I hope, when I meet him/her, he/she is affable, and gregarious, and makes acute observations, and has unique thoughts, and is generally awesome.

Because – you know what? Most of my student employees have been all of the above so far.

Here's hoping.

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