Phil Robertson, affluenza, and the War on Christmas

What do these trending topics all have in common?

They all make me want to quit facebook.  Jeezy Creezy.

I’ll spare you my thoughts on these trending topics – I’m sure that if you are on social media, you’ve already heard it all.  Instead, I’ll tell you another quick sweet story that makes you like humanity (as opposed to wanting to poke all of humanity’s eyeballs out, which is what facebook has essentially done for me this week).

(But every time I want to quit social media, someone shares something kind of lovely like this or this, or some great story about their kid or their morning, or an awesome joke, or a great song, and I’m like – yeah, still worth the ten or so minutes I give it every day.)

So.  We live in Alabama, right?  And people in Alabama – well, they be CRAZY about some college football.  (Here’s another cute link that gives you some idea of the culture down here, and it is absolutely the total truth.  Jack had lived here and been going to daycare for only about two months before he started punctuating the bulk of his interactions with “Roll Tide” – and occasionally “War Eagle,” or “Roll Tide Eagle,” or “War Tide,” because those daycare ladies have a good time battling over the children’s loyalties and simultaneously confusing the heck out of them.)  (Ahem, for those of you not indoctrinated in the culture – Alabama’s big rival is Auburn.  Alabama’s battle cry is “Roll Tide,” and Auburn’s, for some inexplicable reason, is “War Eagle.”)

I have to write this story with some euphemisms in order to avoid google searches, since I don’t think it’s public knowledge and it’s not my place to make it so.  You’ll be able to figure it out, though.  A former secretary at my firm recently lost her young brother to swift-moving and terrible cancer.  He was in his forties, and left behind two middle school aged children.  He died at a hospice in the big college town in Alabama a handful of weeks ago.  Just before his death his young son whispered in his ear that when everything got better, he was going to take his daddy to meet the college’s very famous QB, because that would be a super cool father-son activity.  Rip your damn heart out, right?

So my firm arranged it.  An afternoon of tossing footballs, on the field, in the stadium, with one of the biggest rockstar QBs in college football and one of the most famous people in the state.  It is cruel that the kids’ father wasn’t there, beyond cruel.  But it was the best the firm could do, and they did it – some big name partners took the afternoon off to take these kids over there and facilitate the meeting.  For a former secretary’s nephew and niece.

Not bad for a bunch of heartless lawyers, am I right?