MICHAEL

As one of the chief bloggers in a thriving blogging community, I have an obligation to report the news. I choose to present the scoop du jour in an informative and entertaining manner. Nonetheless, I am not going to speculate on who is and who isn't running in the the BISD. I will wait until tomorrow when I will release the South Texas Independent Journalists Association (STIJA) poll on all the projected icontested races.

I have more pressing matters that engage me at the moment. I have three sons. There's Carlos who is 30 and teaching science at St. Anthony's in Harlingen. There's Joaquin who is 27 and pursuing his musical dream in Austin while he lives an artist's existence. And last but hardly least, there is Michael who is 13 and attends Manzano Middle School.

All my sons are athletes. The McHales are athletes. We take our sports seriously. I will be 67 in two weeks and I am playing the best tennis of my life. In my youth I couldn't get enough football, basketball and baseball. As a senior, I started for a 6A California high school as a shooting guard.

Michael is my baby and I spoil him, but as a former coach who knew the glory of championships, I talk to him straight. He loves football. He loves the pain of the game. He loves his teammates. He has a Marine's attitude. This year he started at wide receiver and corner. The Spartans went 7-2. Their two defeats went down to the wire, but they gained a measure of satisfaction when on the last game of the season they ruined Stell's perfect season by upsetting the Warriors, 22-21, on a last-second touchdown.

Michael moved to track next. He's at that age when he is looking at himself in the mirror all the time in pursuit of being the best he can be superficially. Like his daddy and his writing, he still lacks that 24/7/365 commitment, but, damn, he's a kid. I never pushed my two big boys and I'm not going to push him, but I am demanding in the sense that a father wants his son to realize his potential.

He did disappoint me earlier in the school year. I bought him a saxophone last year and he took a year of music as a sixth grader, but he begged me to free him from the dictatorial excesses of band directors. He is an excellent guitar player for his age and I wanted him to study three years of band in junior high so he would be proficient reading music.

He asked his mother if he could exit music, but she deferred to me. After listening to his anguished plea and promising that he would work extra hard on his guitar, I relented and gave him permission to drop the class. I took the saxophone back to the dealer and he have me $500. The instrument had depreciated $400 in a year.

Sams Stadium hosted the junior high district meet on Saturday. Ten Brownsville schools participated and junior high kids give it their all. Sports, for most, is the number one priority in their lives. Michael's four-man team won the 800-meter relay and finished second in the 400-meter relay. In his previous meets, he had run the 200-meter and finished second every time.

The night before the meet I told him over dinner at The Vermillion where we feasted on nachos, ceviche, onion rings and guacamole, "If you win the 200 tomorrow, I will give you a $100."

"Really, Dad?"

"Really, son."

He burst out of the gates and gained the psychological advantage over his nemesis by sprinting at his fastest and taking the early lead with no regards to pacing himself. Ten yards short of the finish line he ran out of gas. He told me he felt he was in a dream where a person is running in place as somebody or something chases him. With pain streaking his contorted face, he willed his legs to keep pumping and by a nose crossed first before he went tumbling, leaving himself covered in abrasions and with a bump on his head.

I was so proud of my little boy. He had compensated for his decision to leave music by leaving everything on the field. The first thing he said when I collected him at school, well, I'm sure you can guess it: "Do you have that hundred? And by the way, I'm starving. Let's go eat wings."

Success, however, has not come without a cost. His head has swelled. He has taken to bragging. Since I live by karma and feel firsthand the struggle between the ying and the yang, I have consistently warned him to never feel that he is better than anyone else. You never know!

The next night he was at a Christmas event. One of the activities featured an old car. For a dollar anyone could pick up a sledgehammer and pound the vehicle. Mr. Macho Michael picked up the sledgehammer. He hit one of the bumpers but the sledgehammer kept going south and landed with a full impact on his toe. God had punished him for his arrogance.

"What did I tell you, papacito?" I said as we drove this morning to my pediatrician, Dr. Romeo Montalvo, who has been my children's doctor for more than three decades. "You have to be humble. You have to be respectful. You have to be grateful. You have to work harder and you can't take anything for granted. And you have to become a better basketball player if you really want to stand out as an athlete."

Dr. Montalvo checked his toe. If it were broken, the fracture would be so near his nail that there was nothing that could be done except apply ice, take Motrin, stay off his feet and rest. As to the knot on his head from the 200 when he went crashing to the track, the doc pronounced him fit. And for good measure, the nurse gave him a flu shot but not before Dr. Montalvo reminded me he would need his second HPV shot in February.

Pobrecito! He may enjoy sports as much as I did, but he isn't going to experience sex as I did. And unlike me who was kept ignorant of the facts of life in parochial school and only lived in fear of hell, Michael is familiar with the birds and bees. Sadly, he must always live in fear of the consequences in a modern world rotten with venereal disease.

Our children are innocent for short a time. In my opinion, it is one of life's greatest tragedies.