During our last practice,\u00a0I decided it was finally time to solve a very important problem facing\u00a0the soccer team I coach: two of the kids have the same name.\u00a0I gathered the team\u00a0together,\u00a0and just laid it out for them.<\/p>\n
“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I can’t keep\u00a0shouting one name and having two people respond. It’s too confusing. What are we going to do?”<\/p>\n
A few of the kids laughed. The rest sort of looked at each other. One shouted “We should call one Jimmy!”<\/p>\n
Neither of the two kids are named Jimmy, or James, or anything like that, so\u00a0that solution didn’t fly.<\/p>\n
“What about last names?” I asked. One of the two kids is my youngest son, but I don’t really have a problem shouting “Hey, Matthews! Pick up the pace!” \u00a0I mean, I heard that enough when I was playing. It would almost make me feel more comfortable to have someone shouting it again.<\/p>\n
The two kids\u00a0shook their heads. “Nah.”<\/p>\n
“How about Batman?” my son asked.<\/p>\n
“You think they’re going to call you\u00a0Batman?” I asked.<\/p>\n
He shrugged. “Sure.”<\/p>\n
“Yeah!” another player shouted. “Batman!”<\/p>\n
Others joined in, shouting support, and it was decided. My son is now Batman.<\/p>\n
Pretty cool, right?<\/p>\n
Fast-forward to the game on Saturday. I’m standing on the sidelines, shouting advice and encouragement to the players, things like “Cover back!” and “Pass!” and “You’ve got a man on your back!” It’s what I do every Saturday, part of being a coach.<\/p>\n
This Saturday, however, I found myself shouting “Get back, Batman!” and “Great shot, Batman!”<\/p>\n
Once, after he\u00a0had tried to dribble the length of the field without passing, I even yelled “Batman! You can’t do it all by yourself!”<\/p>\n
At which point, his older brother\u00a0(who helps me coach) leaned over and said in a gravelly whisper, “Yes he can. He’s Batman.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You know that old rule that you can’t give yourself a nickname? Apparently, it’s not true. Enjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,122,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-GS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2658\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}