MY SON HAS TEETH! That's right...Owen, who seems to be a little ahead of the game in lots of ways, is in that boat yet again. Middle of last week, we discovered a small bump on his gums, and lo and behold! His first tooth really broke through over the weekend, the bottom left incisor, right up front. Then, just a little while ago, Heidi gave me even better news...ANOTHER tooth! Right next to the first one, Heidi said she saw that it's now visible. So he just turned 6 months old on Monday, and he's got two teeth coming in.
Much to my pleasure, Heidi also told me he was playing with a golf ball. WOOHOO!! The football is next. Heidi already thinks he's growing up too fast...and maybe he is. Everything's just so good with him, and good things always seem to go quickly.
After a great deal of despair and anger (in case you couldn't tell from that last post), I finally broke out of the funk late Tuesday. Saturday's loss was tough, and sure, OU's hopes for an 8th national championship this season are probably all-but-dead-and-buried, but I'm still a Sooner and they're still my team, and this week is the Red River Shootout. I simply can't miss that. I just hope OU wins. Seriously, I shudder to think what my mood will be like if Texas wins that game. Heidi is probably dreading that very possibility.
I was really mad at Colorado (not just CU, but the whole state...that happens when bad things happen for me), but I'm over that. Still, it will probably be a while before I invest much in anything Colorado-related, but at least I'm able to keep my negative opinions to myself. For example, I have very little interest now in the Rockies' big playoff push, even though I was very interested before Saturday's debacle. I didn't want to have anything to do with Colorado or any noun related to Colorado (except for Heidi, Donovan, Connor, and Owen). I lashed out at the state for ruining something else for me. And I got in a huge fight with Heidi because of my opinions about Colorado; Heidi being a native, she was just a bit offended at my language and behavior toward her home state. Granted, there were actually a few other things that happened last week that made Saturday's big mess all the more difficult for me to handle, but for me, it always seems to point in one direction.
There's a great deal of complexity in this whole situation. If this blog and indeed, all of life, is about learning more about ourselves, I've learned loads about myself over the last week. First, my opinions are very dangerous. In fact, this whole weekend had me very close to shuttering the blog forever, because this entire work is premised on the fact that I'm different from the other people here in Colorado, and nearly everywhere else, precisely because I'm from Oklahoma. A lot of that ends up being or sounding negative, even if it's not intended to be that way. My negative or seemingly-negative feelings and opinions can be terribly hurtful to those I care about, and frankly, those people are pretty much the only ones who read this thing consistently. What I SHOULD be focusing on is the positive...what makes me a Sooner and what's great about being a Sooner. I've tried through this blog to espouse that philosophy and it works better at some times than at others. But I also always maintained that this blog is about me and for me, primarily, and others are free to read it if they like it and not read it if they don't like it. If I ever feel like I can't write whatever I want whenever I want with this blog, I'm closing it down for good. And as I said, I was about 99% of the way there earlier this week, because I knew that if I put down what I wanted to, it would be a horrible, horrible thing for everyone.
Second, I learned the power of my emotional investment, of my passion, and that my passion can be dangerous if I let it be. I can sometimes be very lazy, very laid-back, very disinterested. But I can also be ultra-loyal, so invested in some idea or organization or brand or person that it becomes a part of my identity. This runs closely to my opinions being dangerous, because most of my opinions come directly from my emotional investments. I've been this way my entire life. This isn't truer for anything else than for my love of Oklahoma and especially for OU, and also for my love for winning. Mom gave me a good lecture about how I've been extremely competitive, even since I was very little (remind me to write sometime about the "female dog" story from my third year of life). I have always hated to lose, and hated it desperately. I have always wanted to win or do well and I had very little interest if I didn't have a reasonable chance to win. This trait is very good in some ways, because that passion and competitiveness can inspire an amazing amount of effort and dedication in me. Look at me; I've been cheering for the Sooners through thick and thin for as long as I can remember, through good years and through bad years. This trait can also be very bad in some ways, because when I don't win, I can get very, very unpleasant very, very quickly. I behaved very poorly for pretty much the rest of the day on Saturday, from the moment I realized that OU was going to lose, until right before I went to sleep that night. I treated some people with a great deal of disdain and disrespect, and that's never a good thing. I could've let that passion ruin my entire week, my entire month, my entire year, my entire life. I could've forsaken OU forever, never watching another game, contributing another dime, even mentioning the name. I could've lost my wife over it. I could've gotten in some pretty bad fights, and either killed someone or gotten killed (trust me, students at CU always offers plenty of opportunities for that sort of thing...remember, the students actually rioted in May of 1997 because they were unhappy that the local police were cracking down on underage drinking). Fortunately, I kept my self-control, as well as could be expected. I'm still alive, I'm still married, and I'm still cheering for OU.
Finally, I realized that I don't know how or why I am this way. As I said, Mom reminded me that I've been this way since I was very little. I don't recall any specific events or patterns that might I experienced early on in life that might have led me to this. Mom and Dad always worked very hard to teach me the good parts of competition, of sports, of OU football; the usual stuff like "you can't always win" and "it's important to be a good sport". Mom and Dad were very passionate about OU football, too, but never to the same degree that I was. A loss by OU didn't seem to ruin their day like it does me. So if you follow the "nurture over nature" idea, I can't really spot anything that might have nurtured me to be the hyper-competitive, ultra-passionate person I am. I wonder if it's somehow genetic; Dad can sometimes have a terrible temper, and I can, too. While I can usually control my anger a little better than I remember him doing when he was my age, I wonder if I channel the temper I got from him into competitiveness. I sometimes am as violently competitive and passionate about my loyalties as he sometimes got about his anger. If I were channeling it that way, it might explain how strong my passion can become.
I'll probably never really know why I am the way I am, but I do know this: it's really about temperance for me. Being temperate in my passion and not blinded by it. Being temperate in my actions and not going overboard. Being temperate with my loyalty so that I do not let myself be led where I do not need to go. I'm pretty good at being temperate with most things, and it's probably much better for me that way. I also know that temperance doesn't seem to go well with my temperament, so we'll see how all this ends up. Honestly, it will probably be the death of me yet.
Thanks for reading along.
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