My Dad coached football for a long long time.

Dear Lord, thank you for allowing me to be a son that enjoyed what his Dad did for a living and did not try to rebel against the game.

I love football.  Yes…I know that does not make sense to many people who know me professionally and don’t have a clue as to how much I enjoy the game of football.

Many folks know I love music.  I so enjoy writing my own songs and making them work and even recording some of my songs.

Many folks know I enjoy writing.  I don’t shy away from it in any way, shape, or form.  I truly am enamored with the idea of finding out how the English language can work for me.  That is what I teach my students.

I tell my students…and they are not going to find this in any T-square driven textbook…that language is situation specific.  If we learn how to use the English language to our best ability in the moment we are in…we are winners.

I gave this example today to a student that I needed to correct because said student had said some things said student should not have said.

I told said student:  Look… when my I get together with my buddies to play cards, I am probably not going to talk like I would talk at a job interview.  I am going to be relaxed.  I am going to joke.  I know the difference.  You (said student) need to learn the difference.  You can’t say the words you said today in front of Mrs. So-and-so.

Like The Byrds sang in reference to Ecclesiastes: There is a time for every season under heaven.

Language is situation specific.  THAT IS WHAT KIDS NEED TO HEAR!  They can figure it out, if we just explain that to them.

I digress.

Getting back to football.

As I said, most of my colleagues over the years don’t know of my love affair with the game of football.  The most important reason why is the school I work at and put my heart into does not have a football team.  I mentioned this in an earlier post.   We are a small school.  We couldn’t field a football team if we wanted to.  I accept this and really don’t care.  These are the students I want to work with.  I work in the town I want to work for.  End of story.

Do I miss football?  Yes.  I last coached the game twenty years ago this fall and I still remember it so very fondly.

But since then I have done SO many other wonderful things.

As I said, I recorded music…lyrics and music that I made up myself.  I got to record with masterful musicians I felt I had no business being in the same studio with.

I wrote a human interest column for a fledgling and now defunct weekly newspaper in the county I live in.  This was 7…8 years ago.

I wrote a novel I am proud of.  It is 74,000 words long. One day I hope it is published.

I was fortunate enough to broadcast high school football games on the radio with my friend Gus Stephenson for a number of years.  That in itself is another great post on speaktherights.com that will come soon.

At the risk of sounding ostentatious as I use the pronoun “I” much more than I…ouch…feel comfortable with, there is a moral to this story.

Oh yeah, before I forget…I sang the National Anthem in the arena where the Indiana Pacers play.  It was in the summer before a high school basketball game.  I can tell folks I have heard two people sing in Conseco…now Banker’s Life Field-house in Indianapolis…me and Paul McCartney.

I, in part, give credit for all my diverse shenanigans into life’s world of opportunity to a chance meeting and a brief exchange I had with one of the world’s all time greatest characters.

Maude McMahan was the librarian of the Brownstown Public Library when I was a kid growing up in Brownstown, Indiana.  Maude was also my next-door neighbor.  She was a wonderful and informative influence.  I so wish my dear wife, Carrie, could have met Maude.  They would have hit it off grandly.

Miss Maude gave me free reign of the public library.  I had a card, of course.  I also had an insatiable appetite for reading books about football.  One of the books I found and read and grew to love at the ripe old age of 10…was “Paper Lion” by George Plimpton.

George Plimpton is larger than this column I write today.  Look him up!

Plimpton was a journalist and an editor by trade.  He was a participatory  journalist.

He played with The Boston Pops.  He skated with The Boston Bruins. He tried to play on the PGA tour.  He did so so many things out of the norm and wrote about his exploits of each adventure.  One of those included playing and training with the Detroit Lions in the 1963 pre-season.  He was also a classmate at Havard and close friend of Bobby Kennedy.

In 1966, Plimpton published “Paper Lion” about his time playing football with the Lions.

I read it around 1978.  Alan Alda starred in a movie by the same name in 1968.

As embarrassed as I am to say I do not remember the year, given I remember most things, George Plimpton came to the campus of Indiana University Southeast in the early 1990s to give a speech.  I was a student there at the time. Plimpton came at the behest of one of the faculty members who was an old friend of his.

I too had a friend on the faculty, Dr. Millard Dunn.  He was my teacher, mentor, and friend.  I still consider him all three.

Anyway, after George Plimpton gave his speech I suddenly found my self in a group of four making chit-chat as the evening was winding down.  The four of us were myself, Dr. Dunn, the colleague of Dr. Dunn whom had invited George Plimpton, and George Plimpton himself.  The four of us just chatted politely.

At the exact same moment, Dr. Dunn and his English teaching colleague were motioned away by different corners of the room.  That left George Plimpton looking at me and me being dumbfounded that I was standing alone next to the guy that wrote “Paper Lion” that I had read when I was ten years old.

I will give you our account in a similar way that I told about my exchange with Carrie’s grandpa in my my CARS entry.

Plimpton to me ( as we where both pulling up the ground):  Well, I think the evening went quite well.

Me to George Plimpton:  Yes it did.  We really appreciate you coming and sharing with us tonight.

Plimpton: You have a nice, cozy little campus here.

Me:  Mr. Plimpton…all the things you have done…it is just amazing.  What inspired you?

Plimpton:  My dear boy…you can think about it all day long.  You can be inspired.  You can have the greatest of intentions.  But until you do something about it….what have you done?

Me:  You do indeed have a point.  Thank you so much for sharing.

About this time Plimpton’s buddy showed back up. Before he was whisked away, George Plimpton looked at me and dropped his head and raised it back up without taking his eyes off me.

As I look back the message was straight-forward:  GO DO IT!

That is what I have tried to do.  That is why I am here pecking away at a keyboard.

When I have been inspired, I have acted.  The adventure is endless.

Thank you, George Plimpton.  You helped.

So here I am…speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

P.S. George Plimpton died in September of 2003. He was 76.  He is still important to me.