It’s just a bed.

A little twin bed with a tendency to creak too much for our daughter’s liking.  It’s also way too small, according to Amanda, who is prone to exaggeration and has been dying for a new one for the last few years.

I remember when we all used to be able to fit in that bed. The whole family would  climb in together – Amanda, Rick, me and even Alec, who usually ended up falling into the crack between bed and wall and had to be rescued.  Read more...

I kid my son that I miss watching his baseball games (he was finished last month after the house league season ended) in much the same way I looked longingly at the high school gym at my daughter’s orientation until she finally urged me to go in and sign myself up for intramurals.

I remind them, whenever it seems appropriate and sometimes when it’s not, of my athletic prowess at their age. And as much as I am scornful of the kind of parents who live through their children’s usually meager athletic feats, I can’t imagine how I would keep still if I had kids who were gifted in some sport.  Read more...

I am writing this on the family p.c. Why, you ask, would I be writing on a big, clunky computer when I have a nice, new laptop I have finally grown accustomed to and even like after weeks of learning how to live without the track ball thing on my old Tribune laptop?
 

The answer is that for the second time in the last month, I left my brand-new power cord to my brand-new laptop in a press box, this time at U.S. Cellular Field after the White Sox game last night. Once again, I got away with it because it was found and I will get it back. But this time, God decided I wasn’t going to get away with it quite so easily and I discovered I have no battery power on my laptop.
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Reading my Sun-Times today and found out that the University of Chicago is now allowing men and women to room together in its dormitories, a new policy that 50 students will take advantage of, so to speak.

I’m trying to imagine what my father’s reaction would have been if I wanted to room with a boy in my college dorm.

I’m wondering how it would have gone if he had let me.  Read more...

You would think that in all my years of covering sports that I would have run into more than one notable sibling rivalry. If I did, it couldn’t have been all that notable since I don’t remember it. Only one stood out and still endures and that’s Venus and Serena Williams, who will meet Saturday for the fourth time in a Wimbledon final.

It used to be a joke, Williams vs. Williams, and one I couldn’t defend.

Here’s the first half of a column I wrote in July of 2000:  Read more...