Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called if 'Chops' because that was the name of his dog And that's what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and a gold star And his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts That was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo And he let them sing on the bus And his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair And his mother and father kissed a lot And the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X's and he had to ask his father what the X's meant And his father always tucked him in bed at night And was always there to do it Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem And he called it 'Autumn' because that was the name of the season And that's what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paint And the kids told him Father Tracy smoked cigars And left butts on the pews And sometimes they would burn holes That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames And the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus And the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot And his father never tucked him in bed at night And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem And he called it 'Innocence: A Question' because that was the question about his girl And that's what it was all about And his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her That was the year Father Tracy died And he forgot how the end of the Apostle's Creed went And he caught his sister making out on the back porch And his mother and father never kissed or even talked And the girl around the corner wore too much makeup That made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do And at three A.M. he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly That's why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem And he called it 'Absolutely Nothing' Because that's what it was really all about And he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist And he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn't think he could reach the kitchen
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Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. Wouldn't you say, she asked, that killings like this are influenced by violent movies? No, I said, I wouldn't say that. But what about 'Basketball Diaries'? She asked. Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun? The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office, and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. Events like this, I said, if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; These two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory.
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Was I gung-ho about changing society when I was 18? I don't know about that. When you're 18, you're really into yourself and what's happening to your body. But I definitely had some ideas. This malaise is not confined to America either. I spotted that same attitude in kids in Eastern Europe before the fall of communism.
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One of the biggest things that people say is that kids love football, they love baseball, they love soccer, they love basketball, but put a hockey stick in their hands and we'll find out where their true love is.
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Ricky I don't know why we don't get a drink ... sittin inside this place. Bobby I promised Chloe we'd come here Ricky She doesn't even know where the hell she is, Bob. She'd have more fun if we were at Bodners. She could play the triva game like she likes it, or the little racing game thing she does. Bobby She's a little girl, little girl's don't like to go to bars. Ricky We had fun, we went to bars when we were kids ... met all the different people, right ...remember Slimmy
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We set basketball back about 100 years in the first half. They shut down everything we tried to do and we shut down everything they tried to do. So in the second half, I played dumb. I told the kids to spread the floor, don't run any sets and just play basketball.
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The second half was a back-and-forth basketball game. Give Arkansas credit. They made some plays and their kids played hard and I thought it was a great college basketball game that both teams had a chance to win at times.
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Children look for grown-ups to show them how to live; When we try to fool them, they see through us like a sieve. We recognize the problem now; that's wonderful to see; The answer may well plague us 'til new values come to be. Volunteers are wonderful and will help to meet the need, But we must change the literature on which our children feed. We must teach and model absolutes of love, and justice, too; Prove to them that what we say, is just what we will do. There is one book, and it alone, will help attain success. It is the book, our fathers brought, to tame this wilderness. They used the Bible as their guide, the written Word of God; And found the wisdom written there, the greatest on this sod. Whether it was in the home, in public, or in school, The bible was the blueprint that became their greatest tool. Let's trash the recent literature before it is too late; Teach again, the basic values, that made our nation great. Surely it is evident, without a single doubt, That truth and right mus be invoked to help our children out. So, let's scour all the nation, and get folks to volunteer That believe the principles our precious kids should hear. If they are dependable, and use the proper tact, Volunteers can help to get our children back on track.
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Everyone likes to think that in the past everything was so quaint, so charming. Neighbors knew each other. Kids didn't have sex. It's a freakin' fairy-tale. Life sucked then, too. It just sucked without indoor plumbing.
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I graduated pretty quickly. When I was eleven or twelve a close friend of the family got lynched. I guess he was about forty years old, married, and we used to play with his kids. I remember the Saturday night a bunch of white men beat him to death at the Decatur fairgrounds because he sassed back a white woman. They just left him dead on the ground. Everyone in town knew it but never said a word in public. I went down and saw his bloody clothes. They left those clothes on a fence for about a year. Every Negro in town was supposed to get the message from those clothes and I can see those clothes now in my mind's eye.... But nothing was said in public. No sermons in church. No news. No protest. It was as though this man just dissolved except for the bloody clothes.... Just before I went into the Army I began wondering how long I could stand it. I used to watch the Saturday night sport of white men trying to run down a Negro with their car, or white gangs coming through town to beat up a Negro.
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Coffee is not for kids
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Ace The town will never be the same. After the Tangiers, the big corporations took it all over. Today it looks like Disneyland. And while the kids play cardboard pirates, Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments and Junior's college money on the poker slots. In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. Today, it's like checkin' into an airport. And if you order room service, you're lucky if you get it by Thursday. Today, it's all gone. You get a whale show up with four million in a suitcase, and some twenty-five-year-old hotel school kid is gonna want his Social Security Number. After the Teamsters got knocked out of the box, the corporations tore down practically every one of the old casinos. And where did the money come from to rebuild the pyramids Junk bonds. But in the end, I wound up right back where I started. I could still pick winners, and I could still make money for all kinds of people back home. And why mess up a good thing
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[Last February, one of the first major decisions he had to make as coach was determining the fate of leading returning rusher Nick Turner , who� had� struggled academically and had plead guilty to passing counterfeit money. Croom ultimately dismissed Turner from the team but allowed him to keep his scholarship for the spring semester so he could leave the school in good academic standing.� ] If a kid doesn't get that degree, it's going to affect him, his family, the kids he's going to have, ... That's a heavy burden to have. I agonized over that decision for a week.
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You bunch of nerve-racking sons of bitches, it's like playing cards with my brothers kids!
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That's the interesting thing about becoming a father. Suddenly you universally have something in common with other people. I can be sitting next to a very straight, humorless businessman or stockbroker type on an airplane and we'll just start talking about kids. And that conversation last three or four hours.
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I used to envy kids who had an old-fashioned Grandpa. Not any more. I've got a new ambition. Now I just want to become a modern-type Grandpa myself-and really start living.
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It is ridiculous claiming that video games and internet influence children. For instance, if Pac-man affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms and eat pills while listening to monotonous electronic music.
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I'm not sure what he did, but it looked ugly. It's kind of mixed emotions. The kids wrestled really well, but it's sad to see a kid go down with a freak accident. I would have rather we took second and have him back for the rest of the year.
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And there's a lot of that stuff with people bringing their kids, kids bringing their parents, people bringing their grandparents - I mean, it's gotten to be really stretched out now. It was never my intention to say, this is the demographics of our audience.
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Platt High School is a very good and very well-coached basketball team. For our kids to stay with them for as long as they did is a major accomplishment for them and something to look forward to for next year.
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My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor.
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It was just a good competitive high school baseball game. Juices flowing. The kids were competing and we competed until the last out.
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As a dad, he thinks that his philosophy is morally correct. He has no conscience whatsoever about letting his kids put a penny in a light socket to find out electricity is not so good for you, and if you want to learn how to swim, you have to be thrown into the deep end.
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This year has been one of the most rewarding. To win this one this way at the end of the year, it's a great tribute to these kids and to a great coaching staff. It was great to cap it off with a win like this.
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Each one is a new year. I'm just so happy for these kids because they've been through some adversity this year. But they kept a good work ethic.
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There might be some truth to (more pressure playing close to home). Kids say, 'There's so many people there I want to do so well,' so that can happen. If you're out in San Diego you're just kind of playing. (But) I don't think these guys will feel that way -- I hope they don't.
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Kids need love the most when they're acting most unlovable.
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The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks.
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What you must realize is that the kids are always teenagers - but he's an angel, so he's ageless.
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You know, I think that if parents would spend less time worrying about what their kids watch on TV and more time worrying about what's going on in their kids' lives, this world would be a much better place.
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