Little Things

Little things can set you off, ya know? Tonight I was going through an old notebook of mine, when suddenly there was page in writing other than my own.

It was a page full of football stats that was foreign to me, I couldn't have begin to have told you what it means, but I reconised the wriitng (well printing) instantly. It was my father's.

My father was constantly writing down football statistics, always needing to know exactly where every team in the NFL stood every week. So, he'd write down how many wins and losses every team had and he'd update it every week.

I inherited that trait from him, not with football, but I find myself doing it with hockey. During hockey season, I have millions of pieces of paper with hockey stats all over it. In fact, it that same notebook, there's a couple pages in my writing, detailing how every team in the leafgue was doing at that moment.

I figure it was the result of twenty years with my dad. Like me, he liked having everything out in front of him, writing it down to make it clearer. As I looked at this piece of paper, I could see him in my mind, writing down those numbers and then later--reciting them off at the top of his head.

I never had to pay much attention to what was going on the NFL, all I had to do was ask Daddy. If I wanted to know what was going on, he'd just recite off the order of all the teams. I miss that. Last season, I kept having to struggle to figure out where everyone was in the standings, because I couldn't just ask my dad.

So, yeah it was just a little piece of paper I found, but it was such a part of what my dad special. It was just such a Rick thing, that it made me sentimental. You miss the little things as much as the big things, you really do.