My First Rodeo

by Stoney Stamper

  We made a loop around town, zigzagging down the road at thirty miles per hour in a sixty-five-mile-per-hour zone and then sixty-five miles per hour in a thirty-mile-per-hour zone, changing lanes without checking the mirrors and not using blinkers. We took a back road that would lead us back to the house with less traffic. As we approached our road, she didn’t seem to be slowing down.

  I said, “Your turn is coming up.” But still she maintained her speed. I repeated myself. “Hey, your turn is coming up. Hey! You’re going to miss the turn!” And just when I thought she’d surely miss the ninety-degree turn from Blackjack Road, she turned the wheel hard, without ever touching the brakes. Of course, we were going too fast and our momentum wouldn’t allow us to make the turn. She slammed the brakes, but into the far ditch we went, missing the oncoming stop sign by inches. We both sat silent for a moment. I think we were both reflecting on our lives and thankful to still be among the living.

  I looked at her. She looked at me. And then she said, “I was going too fast.” Yeah. No joke, kid.

  After a few more months of practice, her driving improved and, thankfully, the ditch incident is the closest we came to a fiery crash. But here’s the good news. I’ve learned that yelling and stomping on the imaginary brake pedal in the floorboard from the passenger side might feel good in the moment, but it does no good in the long drive. I’ve learned to take deep breaths and give constructive criticism rather than scream bloody murder and duck for cover. I am proud of her for becoming a better driver, but secretly, I may be a little prouder that I’ve learned it’s okay to hand over the reins to someone else, even if it’s just for a bit. Even if I’m handing them over to a teenager.

  They (again, who is “they”?) say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. And they may be right. But I’m living proof you can teach an old control freak who is suddenly a new dad a thing or two.

  Go Down Swingin’

  Igripped the bat tightly in my hands. Too tightly. I wrung my hands back and forth in anxiousness as I watched the pitcher check first base, then turn his focus toward the little freckled kid at home plate—that would be me. He wound up and fired the ball. I gripped the bat a tad tighter and then did nothing as the ball flew over the plate and smacked into the catcher’s mitt. “Strike two!”

  My shoulders slumped. I backed out of the box and turned to look at my dugout. My coach, Dickie Willis, was my best friend’s dad. Coach treated me just like his own. “Swing the bat, Stoney!”

  I stepped back in the batter’s box. Again, I raised my eyes to the pitcher. I watched him check the runner on first base, then wind up, and then pitch. And once again, I did nothing. I heard the ball hit the glove. I heard the umpire yell, “Strike three!” I walked slowly, defeated, back to the dugout. With tears in my eyes, I looked up at my coach. He shook his head and said, “If you don’t swing the bat, kid, you won’t ever hit the ball.” I had disappointed my coach and my team. I nodded my head in recognition and found myself a place on the bench.

  On the surface that sounds like basic baseball advice. I mean, it’s pretty simple, right? If you swing the bat, you’ve got at least a chance to hit the ball. If you don’t swing the bat, there’s no chance. You don’t have to be Babe Ruth to figure that one out.

  After the game, I got in the truck with my dad. “You played well tonight, Stone. You made a great catch in center field, and you did a good job backing up second base.” Dad was always positive, and he did his best to build my confidence and focus on the positive points of my performance. Only after he had patted my back and made me laugh and smile would he venture off into the things he felt needed work. But even then, he was always kind. I sensed he was getting ready to start talking about the places I needed to improve, so I decided to beat him to the punch.

  “I’m not a good batter, Dad. I struck out. I always strike out.” He didn’t say anything for a minute. He just let my words hang in the air between us. But then he spoke, and when Dad spoke, I always tried to listen closely. “Whether or not you are a good batter isn’t really in question here, Stone. I have no doubt that if you really tried to be a good batter, you would be. But here’s what I am seeing. You’re not trying. When you don’t take a swing at the ball, you are accepting defeat without even giving any effort.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments; then he asked, “Why aren’t you swinging at the ball?” I thought about the question for a bit and finally replied, “He was throwing really hard, and I guess I was just afraid I would miss it.” What my dad said next was undoubtedly one of those moments when everything becomes clear, when something in your mind clicks.

  Dad said, “Well, let me ask you. Would you feel just as bad right now if you had swung at the ball but still missed it? Either way, you struck out. But would you rather swing and miss? Or would you rather just not try?”

  At that precise moment, I knew whom I’d most disappointed—myself. Not for striking out, but for not trying to hit the ball at all. Dad’s simple piece of advice changed who I was. I made my mind up right that second. I’d never lose for lack of effort. From that point forward, I tried with all my might at everything I did. I wasn’t the best athlete at the school, but I tried hard. I wasn’t the best student either, but I tried hard. I never wanted to feel that disappointment in myself again. I never wanted to feel like I could’ve given more but just didn’t try.

  In a very real sense, I am who I am today because of that one simple talk I had with my dad in his old red Ford pickup on the seven-mile drive home from a baseball game more than twenty-five years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday.

  But fast-forward. Now I’m a thirtysomething dad myself. My daughter Emma is the second baseman for her softball team, and she reminds me of myself in so many ways. I am her coach at third base, and she is stepping into the batter’s box, facing a pitcher who throws faster and harder than any other girl in our league.

  I watch Emma as she grips the bat and wrings it in her hands. I can see the anxiety in her face. I’m mumbling beneath my breath, “Swing the bat, baby. Just swing the bat.” The pitcher winds up and delivers a fastball right down the middle. “Strike!” I see her slump. I holler at her from third base, “Swing the bat, Em! You can do it! You’ve got to swing at it!” We make eye contact, and she nods her head at me. She steps back into the box, digs her feet in, and gets set. She’s got a different look on her face now. She’s focused. She’s determined. The pitcher winds up and fires a harder, faster pitch at her. This time, she swings. There’s the distinctive sound of a ball hitting an aluminum bat—sort of a thwink. The crowd begins to cheer as Emma starts to run toward first base. But then the ump screams, “Foul ball!” The ball had just caught the tip of her bat and flew maybe fifteen feet up the first-base line. Her mother and I clap and yell as if she’d hit a grand slam. “You’ve got her speed down now, Em! Just straighten the next one out. You got it.”

  Again, she gets ready for the pitch. The count is 0–2. The pitcher throws the ball. Emma steps with her left leg and slings the bat in front of her, just like she’s been taught. She rotates her hips and swings through the ball with all her little seventy-five-pound frame. And the ball hits the catcher’s mitt. “Strike three!” Her shoulders sink as she wilts out of the batter’s box and heads back toward me. I prepare myself for tears, but what I get is something else entirely. A smile. A big, beautiful, beaming smile. She says, “I did what you said. I swung the bat.” I smile back at her and say, “You sure did. You did great. I think you did just great.”

  Bird’s-Eye View

  It was an unseasonably beautiful day in January in East Texas. We’d all been cooped up and bundled up for the last couple of wintery months, and my family was excited to see the first springlike weather of 2015. April was all aflutter around the house, pulling back the curtains, opening windows, and letting fresh air fill the house. It felt amazing, and you could feel the happiness in the air as our daughters ran around an
d played in the yard, their laughter filling the sky.

  There is a window above our kitchen sink that slides open from the side, a window that doesn’t have a screen. There is a planter box hanging on the outside that April keeps filled with flowers when the weather turns warm for good. And it’s also a popular landing spot for birds. But the happy sounds of the kids playing were just too wonderful to pass up. So even though the occasional bird fluttered by the window, we opened it wide.

  I decided it might be a good time to do some writing. I sat down with my laptop and began using this blessed day as an inspiration for some much-needed prose and poetry. After a few minutes, Abby came in the house to get something to drink. She sat down at the dining room table to relax, then suddenly screamed, “A bird!” I looked up at her, not fully understanding what she meant. Again she screamed, “A bird is in our house! It just flew into your bedroom!” I jumped up from my chair and ran toward the bedroom door. Abby and I both tried to sneak a peek through the door to see if we could spy our feathered intruder. After thoroughly looking around the room from the doorway, I gently stepped inside. I tiptoed around as Abby stood close behind me, nudging me forward. I whispered, “Stop pushing me!” She whispered, “I’m not!” By the way we were acting, you’d think that we were in pursuit of an angry grizzly or something.

  We didn’t see anything in the bedroom, so I started for the door of our master bathroom. I peeked my head inside, but still no bird. But then I heard it—a small chirp, just a tiny little noise from over near the shower. I still couldn’t see him, but I knew he was in there. My wheels started turning. How can I catch that bird? First and foremost, I knew I needed to keep him in the bathroom, so I closed the door. I thought that if I used a bedsheet as a net, I could sneak into the bathroom and easily throw the sheet over him (or her, I suppose). Then I would wrap the sheet gently around her/him and carry her/him outside and release her/him to freedom. No problem. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Ah, the well-crafted plans of first-time dads.

  To begin with, all the sheets were in the bathroom cabinet, and that’s where the bird was, in the bathroom. I needed to be able to walk into the room fully prepared, ready for action. April had been doing laundry and, having just learned of our situation, said, “Hey, there’s a yellow fitted sheet here in the laundry room.” Yes, she said a yellow fitted sheet, and as we all know, fitted sheets can ruin the best of days. Fitted sheets aren’t user friendly. They’re impossible to fold, sometimes even impossible to put on your bed correctly. So I just assumed it would be troublesome while performing the act of bird wrangling as well. But it was all I had.

  Well, the sheet didn’t hang right. I was holding it up to my side, much like a champion matador approaching his fighting bull from across the pen. I inched closer and closer to the shower, yet I still hadn’t seen the bird. Just the occasional chirp let me know we were on the right track. As I came alongside the shower, my fine-feathered friend made his first appearance in our little game of bird and man. With a piercing screech that sounded like a red-tailed hawk, he flew around the corner of the tub at what must’ve been Mach 3. I don’t know, I was kind of winging it there. Could’ve been Mach 2, I guess. I don’t know Machs very well, but it was going really, really fast. And get this, he was brazen enough to dive-bomb my head. Can you imagine?

  What happened next comes in small, short memories. I am not certain if I actually suffered a head injury giving me amnesia or if I just sort of blacked out. But here is what I have figured out after some reflection. First, the brazen dive-bomb I mentioned. Then, a very unmanly scream and slap at the bird, which only barely made contact. This slap did, however, upset the bird very much, and he decided to show me just how much he didn’t appreciate it. He shifted into supersonic gear (which is beyond Machs) and began angrily circling me, as fast as he could fly, while simultaneously attacking my head. He grabbed my cap, and I swatted him away but at the same time swatted off my cap. This was the first time I really got a glimpse of this flying mammoth. Judging by his massive wingspan, I am not even sure how he got through the window in the first place. Well, he came back for more, and now there was nothing protecting my poor hairless noggin. He had discovered my weakness and was capitalizing on it. His ferocious pterodactyl-like claws made contact with the softness of my scalp, and he was like a lion that has tasted blood. More kamikaze-style flying by the insane bird, and I had yet to have even gotten close to catching the thing. As a matter of fact, I had dropped my fitted sheet about halfway through that last dive-bombing. The bird flew over above the tub and paused a minute. I felt sure he was mocking me.

  I picked up my fitted sheet and headed toward the shower again. This time, he waited. I got closer and closer, and then he dive-bombed my head again, and now he made solid contact with my ear, and I screamed like Daniel Stern in Home Alone when that kid puts a tarantula on his face. My fear was now off the charts. On a scale of one to ten, I’d give it a strong twelve.

  I eased up to the counter, and he landed behind several cans of April’s hair spray, a candle, and a vase, all things that could easily be broken with my spazzy, crazy dad–like movements. But c’mon, this had to be done. I had to catch this bird. Finally, after what must’ve been three excruciating hours (okay, maybe it was ten minutes) in the torture chamber with this vicious animal, he attempted one last flyby, and I made contact with my cap, which I had grabbed from the floor. The predator finally went down. He wasn’t hurt, and he immediately tried to get back up but not before I fitted the sheet over him. Boom! I dominated the biggest, meanest, most fierce bird that East Texas had ever seen with only my bare hands, a baseball cap, and a fitted bedsheet. Eat your heart out, Bear Grylls.

  As I carried the sheet-wrapped bird to the backyard, the girls gathered around to see this wild animal I had conquered. I set the sheet down and began to unfold it. As soon as I pulled the sheet from the top of what surely must be a prehistoric bird that I’d captured, we all stared curiously down at a small brown sparrow. The tiny bird hopped up, shook off his feathers, and flew away, never to be seen again. We stood there speechless until my daughter Emma said, “Was that the right bird? That little ol’ bird made you all sweaty like that?”

  What? I took a deep breath, grabbed my yellow fitted sheet, and huffed away. Kids seldom realize the lengths we parents go to in order to protect them from, well, sparrows.

  The Map to Heaven

  April and I were sitting in the living room, relaxing after a long day. Emma came in carrying her Bible, looking rather studious. She held it up and proudly told us, “This is a map that shows me how to get to heaven.” April smiled at our sweet little blue-eyed beauty and said, “Yep, it sure is. That’s a great way to think about it. Following what’s written in the Bible will lead you right to heaven.”

  April and I looked at each other and grinned. In that moment we felt really proud. Our girls know that the Bible is the map that gets you to heaven! We must be doing something right! Good job, Mom and Dad, we smugly thought to ourselves. Then Emma said, “No, really, it’s the map that gets you to heaven,” and then she pointed to the map of Israel that’s actually printed in the back of her Bible. Oh, well, yeah, okay. That brought us back down to earth a little bit. I believe humbled is the word the Bible uses. Maybe we aren’t quite as good at this parenting thing as we thought. But hey, at least she had her Bible out, right? I know, I know, we’ve got to work on that.

  All I Want for Christmas

  Ah, Christmastime. That most wonderful time of year when we parents spend exorbitant amounts of money on toys, clothes, shoes, boots, coats, hats, and any number of different electronic devices for our children. We do this, you know, to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  Now, I’ve gone to church all my life. When I was growing up, my grandpa was our preacher and my grandma was my Sunday school teacher. Although sitting still and listening were not necessarily my strong points, I’m fairly certain I never heard in Sunday
school or read in the Bible, “Thou shalt go deep in debt on my birthday.” I just don’t think that’s what the Lord had in mind at Christmas. At the same time, parents enjoy giving gifts to children, seeing their faces light up, hearing their squeals of excitement. And I do believe Jesus enjoys seeing that. So yeah, Christmas can get a little complicated.

  April and I were still dating at the time, and I was willing to do anything to make her girls like me. So, with April’s help, I bought my first Christmas presents for Abby and Emma. I was so nervous. I wanted so badly to make sure they’d love whatever I got them. I had this vision in my head of those two girls so happy they’d cry and then insist I become their dad on the spot.

  But that’s not how that Christmas happened. At all. April tells me I have way too high expectations, in everything I do. And I imagine she’s right, but I read something when I was a little boy that I’ve never forgotten. Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, said, “High expectations are the key to everything.” I’ve lived my whole life by that code. I mean, he’s Sam Walton. You should probably pay attention to what he has to say. Except maybe when it’s in reference to buying your soon-to-be daughters’ Christmas presents. In that instance, you should probably keep your expectations pretty darn low. Especially if one of them is Abby, because that girl doesn’t get excited about much.

  On that Christmas, she opened her gifts, smiled faintly, and then looked away. It’s true, we hadn’t really established any trust yet, and she was still skeptical of me. But my feelings were crushed. It wasn’t her fault. She was just a little girl. Yet it still felt like a straight jab to the kidney. Thanks a lot, Sam Walton.