Learning Life's Lessons

Been gone for 2 weeks. Took the fam up to New England to college shop for the oldest (no shit...I'm an old bastard, huh?), and took the rest of the time exploring. After 13 days, I learned three things:

Number 1. Parents and grandparents - no matter how old - are very special to the children, as well as to those parents and grandparents themselves. Currently, I am part of the third of four living generations of me, and that is totally f'ing cool.

Number 2. If there is a place on this great green earth that is better than Fenway Park on a sunny summer afternoon - especially with two wide-eyed boys who have never been there before - I'd like to know where it is.

I'm tellin ya - I fought back tears thinking of the fact that my dad sat next to his dad, I sat next to my dad, and my boys have now sat next to me in that nearly 100 year old ball park. The seats are way to small, way to hard, they face the wrong direction, and they're wonderful. The bathrooms should be condemned, but they're serviceable. The food is too expensive and tastes like crap, and I relished in every dollar spent. The green on the walls, the monster wall in left, 3 foot tall wall in right, a manually operated scoreboard, and 39,000 people - each wearing anywhere from 1 piece to an entire wardrobe of Red Sox attire - screaming, clapping, and chanting their boys of summer on. When one of the Sox hit a two-run homer, the volume was deafening. Freakin deafening.

...Just the way I wanted my boys to experience it.

...Just the way my dad always experienced it... And his dad before him... And all the dads - all the time - as a matter of fact.

Number 3. The thing I learned most of all is that some things just should not change. Ever.