Great story in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated about college football players who discover after their playing careers are over, that they are seriously overweight.

Most people would go right to the cover story on the Stanley Cup. Or the NBA Finals. Or even the feature on the 16-year-old baseball player they’re calling “Baseball’s LeBron” (more on that tomorrow). Me, I go right to the story about the fat kids.

I’m not being insensitive calling them “fat kids.” As one of them, Jeff Kendall, a 300-pound-plus lineman from the University of Oregon, said in the article: “All of a sudden you go from being a fat kid living the dream to, well, just fat.”  Read more...

Why do I get the feeling that if I jumped in front of a speeding train to rescue a group of orphans, at the press conference awarding me my medal for bravery, someone would ask me how it felt spending my career around naked men in lockerrooms?

Everyone wants to know about the naked men.

For a while, I thought maybe it had finally become a non-issue. I would speak to school groups and the kids had moved onto more mature topics like, “How much money do you make?”  Read more...

Whenever possible and especially when the occasion is a truly special one like it was today, I will not hesitate to embarrass our children.

I believe it keeps them humble, builds their character and is a great source of amusement for my husband and I.

It’s nothing major, mind you. This morning, all it really consisted of was marching our 13-year-old daughter Amanda out in front of the house and making her pose for pictures. When you’re 13, it doesn’t take much.

My intention was to duplicate the photo we took of her and her father on the first day of kindergarten, today, on her last day of eighth grade.  Read more...

You have to love children.

That’s what my mother-in-law, who spent her entire career as a teacher and school administrator, tells me about the profession.  

I love children. Or my own, at least. But I question whether I have the aptitude to teach — and by aptitude, I mean the self-control necessary not to be mean to other people’s kids.

As another academic year comes to a close, it is once again time for me to marvel at the extraordinary people teachers are.  Read more...

I wrote a letter today.

Actually put pen to stationery, addressed the envelope, stuck a stamp on it and mailed it. And I was struck by the fact that I could not remember the last time I had done such a thing.

Oh sure, I send out birthday and sympathy cards, thank-you notes. But this was a real letter to a friend, and I did it because strangely, it didn’t seem right to e-mail, not personal enough.

It made me think about some of the letters I have sent and been sent in my life. It made me go hunting for my daughter Amanda’s letters from her first and only attempt at overnight camp.  Read more...