Heros and Goats

©Charles M. Schulz

There are two kinds of people in the world: heroes and goats. Just one of the many lessons I learned from Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang.

For the record, we're Michigan fans. That's The University of Michigan. We bleed maize and blue.

I never miss Michigan football. At just 13 per games per season (when we go to a bowl game), it's an easy commitment to make. I've always liked Michigan basketball (in theory), but freely admit that the season is just too long for me, with more than 30 games in the regular season and a bazillion tournament games.

But last year, our team nearly got blown off an airport runway and then went on to win the B1G (Big Ten) Championship, and I got sucked in. It was a great story. And then we won the B1G again this year, and that was just plain fun

Basketball is fun, at least college basketball, and March Madness is … mad. It's one of the few times in life when you feel like anything can happen. And, according to my brother, it usually does. The youth, the adrenaline, the superstitions, the speed of the game, all add up to a level of unpredictability that can change the momentum in a literal moment.

It's a time when a school no one has ever heard of—University of Maryland Baltimore County—becomes the trending hashtag #UMBC as the first ever 16 seed to beat a #1 team in the NCAA tournament

It's a time of upsets, broken records, Cinderella stories, and buzzer beaters.

It's a time when fans (even only sometimes fans, like me) are on the edge of their seats. I had a great time watching Michigan's buzzer beater against Houston last Friday night. It was particularly sweet because I got to watch it with my own Michigan junior, who came home for the weekend. We ran around the room cheering, like the team ran around the court after watching Jordan Poole arc that perfect winning three-pointer into the hoop at the last second.

The last two minutes of a basketball game are all that really matter (blasphemy, I know, but it's true). This was certainly true of the Michigan-Houston game. Watch those two minutes in the clip below and you can see the "hero", Jordan Poole and his winning shot. You can see the "goat", Houston's Devin Davis, miss his last two free throws, which should have won the game.

You may have already seen a clip of that shot. I wouldn't be surprised. It's been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

But have you seen this clip? Maybe not. These seven seconds were caught by Jeffrey Parsons just a few seconds after the buzzer beater. Michigan's forward Mo Wagner stopped mid-celebration to console Houston's devastated Corey Davis, Jr. The photo at the top of the article shows Wagner giving a conciliatory pat to Devin Davis—the guy who missed the free throws.

Or how about this one, University of Virginia coach Tony Bennett, who could have been the goat after his team's historic loss.

Everyone wants to be the hero. Jordan Poole and his "overdose of swag" certainly does. He's practiced for it and that's great.

No one wants to be the goat. Certainly not Devin Davis, who has overcome a lot in his short life, and shouldn't get derailed for two missed free throws.

It's a world of heroes and goats. But I like the way Wagner and Bennett are redefining things for us. Maybe a hero is not just the guy who made the winning shot, but the guy who took a second to recognize another's pain. Maybe the goat is a hero in disguise, teaching us the most important life lessons.

Because everyone has the potentialities of a hero or a goat.

Because, despite what we see in the world, in politics, and in business—in life, it is how you play the game.

#GoBlue

Halloween — It's All in the Theme — CMB Post

Originally posted on the now defunct Chicago Moms Blog.

"Are you still working on those stupid costumes?" This is the chorus that rings in my ears each year throughout October. Members of this cantankerous choir include my parents, my husband, most of my friends and virtually every other parent at my kids' schools — in other words, everyone except my children.

I realize that, to outsiders, our tradition may seem a bit OCD. So I spend 200 hours a year sewing Halloween costumes for four kids, at least two of whom are now really too old for trick or treating. So what if I'm up till dawn in the days counting down to the 31st, trying to put the finishing touches on Broadway-worthy costumes that will only be worn for a few hours. When the witching hour finally arrives, our theme will shine. (Do you doubt? Click here for pictures.)

It all started 16 Halloweens ago. My premie twins, born the November before, were finally out of the woods after a harrowing year of near-death experiences, five months on the NICU and 11 months on oxygen. Halloween '92 was the first holiday in their nearly year-old lives that we were actually going to celebrate.

These lucky babies were barely sitting up and not remotely ready to party, but my husband had just bought his pet store and our theme was clear. The tiny boy became a frog and the little girl transformed into a little bunny. We held the store's grand opening over the holiday weekend and the cutest animals in the shop smiled at our new customers from the depths of the Pack 'n Play.

Boy/girl twins lend themselves pretty easily to themed costumes; we did Raggedy Ann and Andy, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and a couple of clowns. But then came one baby brother followed closely by another and the theme got complicated. The Wizard of Oz worked well, even though Dorothy towered over her Tinman twin, and when my middle guy first saw his costume, he sobbed because he was afraid of it. We assured him that this was a perfectly appropriate response for the Cowardly Lion. The little guy, just barely toddling, couldn't have been a cuter Scarecrow.

One year, the world's tallest Tinkerbell reigned over Peter Pan, Captain Hook and Tick Tock, the alligator who swallowed Hook's hand. But once we had exhausted all the obvious themes featuring three boys and a girl, we had to get creative.

By now, the kids were fully vested in the theme and had their own ideas. One year, we did candy: a Hershey's Kiss, a chocolate bar, a red M&M (or would that be just one M?) and a Tootsie Roll. They were game pieces one year, and objects of the universe another. Sometimes the theme was stretched pretty thin, like our "nautical" year (Captain Jack Sparrow, the Pirate Queen, a Navy admiral and a scuba diver). Last year, they were royalty — Julius Caesar, Anne Boleyn (complete with bloody neck), a shiny knight and young King Arthur.

So here we are, mere days before Halloween and I'm further behind than ever. It's not entirely my fault, since it's harder and harder to achieve consensus. For example, my daughter has a new obsession and insisted that she wanted to be a forensic anthropologist for Halloween. OK, you figure out how to make that costume — and where's the theme?

After much obnoxiously loud arguing spirited debate, my youngest came up with a "Halloween" theme, where everyone would represent one of the iconic Halloween symbols. He claimed the girl could have her forensic wish and still comply with the theme if we made her a skeleton and labeled the bones (she actually bought that!). The genius with the big idea is going to be a spider. ("Not a cute spider, mom, a scary spider.") The oldest boy is going to be a Charlie Brown ghost — you know, a sheet with 27 eyeholes cut out — and carry a pillowcase that says "I got a rock." And the middle guy will be a mummy.

My daughter recently pointed out to one naysayer that our days of themed Halloweens are numbered; the twins will be seniors next year and that will be that. So, the answer to that perennial question for this penultimate Halloween is, yes, I'm still working on those stupid costumes. And loving every minute.

This is an original Chicago Moms Blog post. When Susan isn't busy sewing her fingers to the bone, she can be found typing them to the bone at Two Kinds of People and The Animal Store Blog.