Here's your sandwich, Dad.

My dad was by far the best athlete in the history of the universe. Including Zeus and Jesus.

This is what my brother and I thought, growing up. To us, he was 9 feet of pure basketball perfection. He could make it to first base in .785 seconds. He could smack a racquetball so hard, it would take our priest's beard off. His golf swing would make supermodels weep with its beauty. He was better-looking than Tom Selleck, and when he told me his muscles were bigger than a tornado's muscles as I sat shriveled in my closet in fear of the drizzling outside my window, I believed him.



He somehow always ended up coaching my sports teams, even though he never signed up to do so. It was as though when some other kid's dad was showing us how to catch a ball I would think, "Listen here you BMI-challenged pathetic excuse for an eight year old basketball team's coach,  my dad can catch a baseball outside of his glove AND he has a mustache. Why don't you go back to frolicking in the daisy field and leave this shit to a real man, okay?"

When I would talk to my dad about the elementary training I was receiving, he would ask questions about the coach's technique, get irritated, offer the unfortunate coach some tips, and inevitably end up in a t-shirt with a cartoon character on it and "coach" on the back, yelling "REBOUND!", "GO TO 2nd", or "MARY STOP CRYING" from the sidelines.



( I always cried when I was taken out of games so the other, not as athletic and not as attractive children could have their "turn")



(I also fouled-out of nearly every single basketball game I played in. I specifically remember kicking an overweight ginger as hard as I could in the gut in a desperate attempt to bring the My Little Ponys to a 1990 victory)



I took my dad and his advice so seriously I did the following activities during my athletic adolescent career:



I slept with a basketball every single night. My dad said it would help me get a better feel for the ball. I felt like it would help me get a better feel for what a sleepless night would feel like it if I married a really fat man with a hard, perforated gut.



In the dead heat of the Oklahoma summer, whenever it was 116 degrees, I would wear a jacket in between pitching innings to "keep my 'pitching' arm 'warm'". It also kept my 11 year old face drippy and delightfully 'warm' as though to ensure I would not have a boyfriend until I was 16 and had outgrown softball and opted for something much more awesome. Like choir.

We would play "Knockout", which was a fun game and helped me to be the most aggressive and physically -abusive ball stealer in the YMCA's history. My dad, brother, and I would all dribble our balls on the court and try to knock each other's out. When yours got knocked out, you were "out". However, mine always got knocked out first, so I would continue to play and try to get my dad's and brother's balls out by any means necessary. Sometimes it included kicking or slapping. It always included crying. If they got on to me for not playing fairly, I would get Mom involved and she would tell them to let me cheat.


But what takes the cake is after every sporting game my dad would ask us to give him a "sandwich". A "sandwich" consisted of saying:

Get it? It was fun to do when you had a good game, but my brother and I weren't the best athletes so most of the time our sandwiches consisted of defeated scripts like this:



Dad: Okay, I know you're hot and sweaty and we refuse to spend money on capri-suns, but let's do a sandwich.



Matthew or Mary: I don't really want to. I just got my ass kicked by the cool kids and I need to use my sexy asthma inhaler.



Dad: Sandwiches are good, come on, we have to learn something from every experience we have.



M or M: Something I did well is that I was nice to the other team, I need to work on batting, fielding, running, and catching, and something else I did well was I hustled.



Hustle: To proceed or work rapidly and energetically.



Brother kicking with a little too much glee.





We ALWAYS used the word "hustled" either at the bottom or the top of our sandwich. I don't even think we knew what it meant, but it always got a positive reaction from my dad and was easy to say. It was one word, two syllables, and made my dad smile and think we would definitely be going to the University of Oklahoma on full athletic scholarships.



I'll finish this blog with a sandwich:



I wrote well and conveyed my message and love for my dad

I need to work on not cussing and being funny and famous

I hustled