You all like to share stories about your children and your efforts to raise them with a proper appreciation for Notre Dame football. I always enjoy these tales, and I would like to share one of my own.
For one game each year, our local high school invites girls in the preschool and elementary schools to join the high school cheerleading squad on the sideline. Boys are not welcome, presumably because they have not yet developed the upper body strength necessary to humiliate their fathers.
One of the cheers the girls practiced yesterday called for one side to call out one of the school's colors and the other to respond with the other color. My daughter, a preschooler, demonstrated the cheer after dinner. Perhaps you can guess where this is going. I, not listening to the buildup, could not. She sprung up and yelled, "Go Blue!"
There was silence. My wife was smiling proudly at my daughter's recall and enthusiasm. Or because she was thinking about Patrick Willis.
This is what it must have felt like when Christopher Reeve went on his last horseback ride. I couldn't move, and I felt like I was choking. My sons, both in elementary school, understood why she had done what she did. But they also knew I needed assistance. The older one said to her, "Kim [we named her after Kim Dunbar], what you just said is like blasphemy." Sensing her confusion: "you know, like when Mom tells Dad he can't say that everyone but Jesus has banged Gary Moeller's wife."
I thought she felt terrible. Eyes welling, she looked at me. But then she took a deep breath, composed herself, and said, "Dad, you don't need to be angry anymore. Turbo Webster [what we called Denard] is gone. Darboh is injured, and Drew Dileo is white. If Greg Mattison were so smart, Lloyd Carr wouldn't have hung 41 on him at the Capital One Bowl. Let go of the hate."
I am proud of her for not apologizing. To quote Michael Bolton, they're the ones who suck.