{"id":6565,"date":"2020-12-02T07:14:25","date_gmt":"2020-12-02T15:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=6565"},"modified":"2020-12-02T07:14:26","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T15:14:26","slug":"the-gift-of-a-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/the-gift-of-a-football\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gift of a Football"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-6565\" data-postid=\"6565\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-6565 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n\n\n<p>I never ask the ocean for anything. It simply delivers what it delivers and often moves in delightful, mysterious ways when it comes to gifts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Such as couple days ago. I had been hunting thrift and grocery stores for a football, any kind of football, because I wanted to wing it around with a buddy on Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No luck. No winging the football on Thanksgiving, which seemed as unAmerican as a Presidential candidate refusing to respect the majority will of the voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So there I was on the beach on a fine bright and cold morning, a football morning, and there it was! A Nerf football in the foam. I couldn&#8217;t believe it! The ocean had delivered a football on the morning high tide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I picked it up. It was in mint condition, not a bit soggy. I feigned a throw. I cradled it under my armpit with textbook halfback form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A white wave rolled in and I had to dodge foam and driftwood. I was moving like Gayle Sayers in open field: I stiff armed and dead legged would-be wave tacklers. I high-stepped through the piles of kelp. Jesus, I was a kid again scoring touchdowns for Mt. Pleasant Elementary and Gardner Junior High in Oregon City when I loved playing football with my friends until one day I didn&#8217;t when simple-minded adults with immature agendas took over the coaching and made it about themselves and not their players. I never did that when I coached football.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I kept moving down the beach and approached my complex of 16 forts. A great gridiron notion exploded into my mind and I let loose a bomb toward one of the forts and the fort swallowed it up. A perfect catch of a perfect spiral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was on. I was scrambling away from deadly defensive ends and ruthless linebackers and rifling the football into the forts. This went on for 10 minutes and I missed one throw<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;d just invented a new quarterback drill! A new competition! I&#8217;d take all comers on Oregon&#8217;s socialist ocean beaches, even that flashy kid from KC.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I never ask the ocean for anything. It simply delivers what it delivers and often moves in delightful, mysterious ways when it comes to gifts. Such as couple days ago. I had been hunting thrift and grocery stores for a football, any kind of football, because I wanted to wing it around with a buddy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-beaches","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6567,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6565\/revisions\/6567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}