I grew up in an era when spanking your child was not only ok, it was basically the norm. This is not a post to aggrandize or demonize the practice. It just was how things were. So this story comes with 0.000 moral judgment. The last spanking that I e...

High school is difficult time of life for so many people. It is a collision of so many variables that can lead to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and a host of other issues. Below are some things that I wish that I knew while I was in high scho...

During my trip to Ecuador in college, I had the opportunity to visit Otavalo Market. It’s a relatively famous market where the indigenous people of the region come to sell their wares. Many of my experiences in Ecuador were memorable and this was jus...

“I got the ball!” is the exclamation of many players after they’ve been called for a foul. This phrase represents a separation between the actual Laws of the Game and the common misconceptions about what they say. Nowhere in the laws does it say that...

There was a point in my life where I owned a decent amount of furniture from IKEA. It just made so much sense at the time. Every piece was cheap, easy to put together and impermanent. I didn’t love my IKEA furniture. It was functional and I’m glad th...

Formations in soccer are popular solution to game time problems. Often one formation or another is viewed as a cure-all but in reality, they are mainly aimed at defining responsibility. Soccer is such a fluid game that very rarely after the first whi...

As a player, I slowly moved from the front to the back in terms of position. Originally I was a forward or wing (playing in a 2-3-5). As a player in men’s leagues, I was usually center back. If I weren’t horrible at it, I probably would have ended up...

At the turning point in the movie “Tommy Boy,” Chris Farley’s character offers to take a dump in a box and mark it “GUARANTEED.” It is part of a sales pitch to undermine his customer’s confidence in other products that offer a guarantee. After that,...

In my neighborhood as a child, kickball was the game that we played most often. I lived near the local middle school and the blacktopped area behind the school was our regular play area. The beautiful thing about that time of my life and in our histo...

They are really quite useful! Maps with that drawing or sticker that tell you exactly where you are on the map. It gives you a frame of reference for your future movement. Whether in a shopping mall, amusement park or any other area with twists and t...