The Final Nine

I was recently searching for eponymous urls at godaddy.com. As one does. I was not surprised to discover that JessePearson.com was “already taken!” I searched a few other domain variants; jesse-pearson.com, jpearson.com, jwpearson.com. (I wanted something that ended in .com because I am old and frightened of newness and change.) I settled on jessewpearson.com . The “w” stands for Bill, which stands for William. I was satisfied with this result. I like to publish under my full name anyway. I think it sounds more writerly or, at least, more publish-y. I spent a few minutes contemplating how many years I wanted to own this piece of virtual real estate. (I settled on three and saved a couple bucks. I could have saved more if I’d gone for five, but I’ve joined 24-Hour Fitness one too many times to fall for that trick again). Then I began to wonder. Who is the other Jesse Pearson? Do people find him when they are looking for me? And what do they find? A few Google-mome...

It was the first week of school. Our car crept through morning traffic in the school drop-off chute. To my pleasant surprise, my nearly-nine-year-old daughter selected My Favorite Things from a playlist on my iPod; a jazzy, scatting rendition from an obscure, 1965 Al Jarreau record. She’d have probably preferred Julie Andrews, but I like my show tunes with a little soul. She’d been obsessed with the song for a over a week, since we watched a rousing performance of The Sound of Music at an outdoor amphitheater in the mountains above our California home. Her younger brother watched her worshipfully as she sang along in the backseat. “Raindrop in roses and whisperon kittens, bricoppaettls and warm wooom mitten, round paper packages tied up wiffstin, thee or a few of my favorite things.” A double smile crossed my face. Nothing amuses me as much as my normally shy daughter’s willingness to mangle songs in the backseat when she doesn’t realize anyone’s listening. But my smile a...

“Run! Goddammit. She has to run in that situation. What the hell are these coaches teaching them?” A woman shouted these words from the bleachers of the Benecia youth sports complex. It was 9:00 a.m. My daughter’s eight-and-under fastpitch softball team, the Tremors, was playing the Vallejo Hurricanes in the first game of “pool play.” It was already 92 degrees outside. I’ve heard it said that being a parent brings out the best angels and worst devils of our nature. If this is true, then watching your child compete in a sporting event places those angels and devils under a neutron microscope. One moment you are blithely clapping for your child as she runs the bases in the wrong direction. The next moment you are angrily defending yourself to child protective services.  There were 16 teams at the Benecia tournament, the first of the summer. The Tremors, like all the teams, played three games on Saturday to create the seeding for Sunday’s medal round. After a l...