Football: Some Random Thoughts

I wrote a post a while back about football, and as I’ve heard that the Super Bowl is today, I am shuffling this post to the top of the card deck. (Yay analogies!) I’m not really a sporty person. I have no idea what the football is actually supposed to be about. It’s a sport. (???)

I’ve always viewed sports as sort of a mock-war to satisfy the human thirst for violence while being less-violent because we value life. A sports-person would probably disagree. Even I sort of disagree with myself. *Shrugs* It seems as though I’m having trouble forming coherent thoughts today.

I usually just watch the Super Bowl for the commercials and the half-time show. I don’t even know who’s playing. (I don’t know how I missed this. I mean everyone’s talking about the Super Bowl.)

GO SPORTZ!!!

(I like hockey the best, but I don’t really keep up with it.)

So yeah. Football!

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I am very clearly not an athletic person. The only game I can somewhat play almost decently is tennis, but I dislike playing tennis, and the only sports game I watched was hockey. But I only watched hockey twice, and it wasn’t really of my own free will.

So being generally unathletic, I tend to look at sports differently than athletic people, which brings us to our question of the day: Why is a football called a football?

First, let us consider the first part of this compound word: foot.

Even with my limited knowledge of sports, I know that footballs are usually carried or thrown, and things that are carried or thrown by humans are usually carried or thrown by the hands, not the feet.

But we shall let this part of the word slide because footballs are occasionally hit by the foot (aka “kicked”) when a player is attempting to launch the football in a parabolic arc through the tuning fork-shaped apparatus.

So the “foot” part of “football” has been considered acceptable, although it is not the ideal choice of word. The most troublesome part of the word is “ball,” anyway.

According to Dictionary.com, a ball is “a spherical or approximately spherical body or shape; sphere.”

A football is clearly not a sphere.

It’s shaped more like a lemon.

Let’s all call it a footlemon!

P.S. That looks like foo-tulle-mon, but it is pronounced foot-le-mon.

Football: Some Random Thoughts

I am very clearly not an athletic person. The only game I can somewhat play almost decently is tennis, but I dislike playing tennis, and the only sports game I watched was hockey. But I only watched hockey twice, and it wasn’t really of my own free will.

So being generally unathletic, I tend to look at sports differently than athletic people, which brings us to our question of the day: Why is a football called a football?

First, let us consider the first part of this compound word: foot.

Even with my limited knowledge of sports, I know that footballs are usually carried or thrown, and things that are carried or thrown by humans are usually carried or thrown by the hands, not the feet.

But we shall let this part of the word slide because footballs are occasionally hit by the foot (aka “kicked”) when a player is attempting to launch the football in a parabolic arc through the tuning fork-shaped apparatus.

So the “foot” part of “football” has been considered acceptable, although it is not the ideal choice of word. The most troublesome part of the word is “ball,” anyway.

According to Dictionary.com, a ball is “a spherical or approximately spherical body or shape; sphere.”

A football is clearly not a sphere.

It’s shaped more like a lemon.

Let’s all call it a footlemon!

P.S. That looks like foo-tulle-mon, but it is pronounced foot-le-mon.

Climate Change: Some Random Thoughts

In my relatively short life, I’ve already noticed changes in the weather. Barely any snow, frigid winters, blistering summers. I remember when we were younger and I had a Slip n’ Slide (which is basically a tarp you put water on so you can slide around) and we’d anxiously wait for the temperature to go into the 80°s so we could use it, but it rarely went above the high 70°s. Now, we have summers where most days are spent in the 90°s.

Also, I remember the snow piling higher than my head. Obviously, I’ve gotten taller, but this winter you could see all the grass, and I doubt I was shorter than grass.

I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure these things should take multiple lifetimes, no one lifetime, and definitely not the fraction of a lifetime I’ve lived.

Grammar: Some Random Thoughts

Grammar is something I’m so-so at. I cannot label all the parts of a sentence and a lot of the finer details fly over my head, but I know enough to get me through writing blog posts without looking like a complete turnip. Although, a lot of my grammar skills come instinctively from reading so much, which probably explains why I can’t do it traditionally by going through millions of rules. (Commence squeaky voice. If this is a verb and that is a subject, then put a semicolon here and here, but not there, because if you put a semicolon there, your will inadvertently blow up the universe.)

But I think that the English language is missing a very important word: a pronoun to go with “person”.

Male is to he

as female is to she

as person is to ?

Often, people will use “their” as the pronoun that goes with “person” to avoid gender bias, but this is technically incorrect because “their” is plural and “person” is not. The correct phrase to use would be “he or she”, but this sounds unnatural and unless you are a very formal person, I doubt you’d use this in everyday language.

Male is to brother

as female is to sister

as person is to sibling

So I am asking you now, dear nonexistent reader, what shall this new word be?

Babies: Some Random Thoughts

When you think, you usually think in words. For example, if you are planning to eat pasta for breakfast tomorrow morning, you would think, Hey, you know what? I think I’m going to be crazy and eat pasta for breakfast tomorrow morning.

Personally, I prefer breakfast foods for dinner over dinner foods for breakfast, but that’s getting off topic. The main point is that those thoughts were in English, or whatever other languages you think in for our bilingual nonexistent friends.

Babies cannot speak, it’s one of the things that make them babies. But before they learn to speak, or even before they learn to recognize language, how do babies form thoughts? It wouldn’t be in words, as they don’t know any words. Would they think in colors? Images perhaps? Sounds? Sensations?

Well, they must think somehow. Babies may not be able to do math, but they aren’t daft. They certainly can communicate in their own way. But if they do think in images, let’s say, then how do these images come about? How do they identify the images without words? Language is such an important part of our lives, it’s hard to imagine what it was like before we knew any.

Everyone was a baby at some point or another, therefore everyone had the ability to think without words at some point in their lives. So do we still have this skill? Can we imagine an object in our minds and not give it a name?

And what would a baby even think about? It would certainly be different from what an adult thinks about as babies don’t have to worry about taxes quite yet.

Peanut Butter: Some Random Thoughts

Peanut butter is an acquired taste. One does not simply adore peanut butter upon their first tasting. In fact, I absolutely abhorred peanut butter for the longest time.

But now, I love peanut butter. Sometimes I’ll eat spoonfuls of peanut butter just because I can.

I used to detest peanut butter. I would definitely not eat PB&J, would not think about peanut butter, would not eat peanut butter, would not touch anything that had previously touched peanut butter, and I would cringe at the sight of peanut butter at the store.

I used to claim a peanut allergy so I wouldn’t have to explain why I couldn’t eat a PB&J. No one questioned it (even though I loved Snickers bars and the like).

Then, in fourth grade, we had a field trip to a museum and the school would provide the lunches. They would be serving PB&J. My friend, let’s call her Catherine, has Celiac Disease, and she actually cannot eat PB&J, but that is due to the bread, not the peanut butter. So, because of this, she was allowed to bring her own lunch, but I wasn’t because my peanut allergy was made up.

So on the field trip, I ate only the crusts of the bread, because the peanut butter made me gag. I realized then that my aversion to peanut butter was a real problem. What would happen if there was nothing to eat but peanut butter, jelly, and bread?

When we got home, I lied to my mom (I know, how evil) and I told her that I ate the sandwich and that I loved it and I wanted to eat more PB&J.

The Dark Days began. Due to my supposed “love of peanut butter” we had PB&J ALL THE TIME. Sometimes, my mother would make my brother pasta or noodles and she would make PB&J for me since I “liked it better”. It was hard, and it was painful, but I ate lots of peanut butter and I acquired the taste.

After I had acquired the taste (through a great deal of hard work), PB&J actually became my favorite food and I ate it even more, which was probably not the most nutritious.

The moral of the story is that you can do anything you put your mind to, even learn to love something as disgusting as peanut butter.

Picture Books: Some Random Thoughts

I wasn’t that into reading as a kid because, let’s face it, most picture books aren’t that interesting. I mean, sure, some kids love them and that’s great, but other kids, like me, are thirsting for adventure and just aren’t satisfied with picture books.

When I was a kid, I couldn’t really read properly until second grade. I was a lost cause in kindergarten, and I was painfully slow and had to sound out each and every word in first grade, but this post focuses more on my kindergarten years year. I couldn’t read and I wasn’t in a mood to learn how to because there weren’t any picture books worth my time.

Why should I read about something boring when I could watch something funny on TV?

Picture books should be interesting, just like any other book, only with simpler language. And sure, we could even tie some morals in there. I think this could spark a reading revolution.

In second grade, books started to grow on me and I’ve loved reading ever since and that is thanks to Interesting Books with Actual Plots. My favorites were The Secrets of Droon and The A to Z Mysteries series. I also loved Rainbow Magic, even though it was everything I hated about Magic Tree House (repetitive plots with the Same Exact Thing happening in Every. Single. Book.), but hey, it was about fairies and I couldn’t resist.