My daughter Sydney has been pretty busy in what is her sophomore year at

Sydney began her college transformation by taking on a tough summer of work painting homes to earn money towards college. Syd was only the second female to make it through an entire summer with her painting company. In fact, she did so well that they promoted her to crew foreman and offered her a possible position within the company.  Painting houses all summer was a difficult job. Sydney worked 12 hour days, six days a week. When painting the houses the crew uses rollers and brushes…not spray! You can imagine how sore her legs, back, shoulders, and arms were those first couple of weeks. In fact, I told Syd not to accept the job when she applied because I didn’t believe she could handle it and make it through an entire summer. That was a challenge to Syd, and she was not about to have anyone tell her she couldn’t do something. 

Syd went to rowing tryouts and found herself not only competing to make a spot, but did so well that they placed her on the first novice boat (essentially the Junior Varsity team). This means that she will get to go on the road and compete with other colleges around the Pac10.   The funny thing is that Syd is the smallest rower on the team. She is small enough to be a coxswain (the person who steers the boat), but strong enough (probably all that summer painting) to be a rower. Practices are early in the morning every day of the week. 

When I was a child my parents spoiled me with love, attention, and plenty of homemade meals. Yes, many times those meals consisted of macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, soup, and frozen dinners, but my mom also put together some awesome homespun dinners. Fast food really wasn’t part of our typical diet until my teens. In fact, making a trip to McDonalds or another fast food joint would have been a treat or a reason of necessity. Then one evening my cousin Carl came to visit us from California. To celebrate we went out for pizza at a local pizza parlor in town.

Pizza was never a meal in my early youth that I was too interested in. My parents would order a combination pizza or Hawaiian pizza. These flavors never really turned me on. My dad also liked the occasional shrimp or hamburger and onion pizzas, but they just simply made me turn a shy eye…or maybe my stomach turn. This is where my cousin Carl comes into the picture. When we went to pizza with Carl that night my parents ordered their typical fare, but my cousin ordered pepperoni as the topping on his pizza. What happened next changed my life…cousin Carl offered me a piece of his pepperoni pizza.

Today pizza is my favorite food…pepperoni pizza to be specific. I would have to admit that my family eats pizza at least once a week. Than again, we eat other fast foods probably even more. But pizza has a special place in my heart, not to mention my stomach.

Pizza and party are almost synonymous. Almost every birthday I’ve ever had has been celebrated with pizza. Even the night before my wedding was celebrated at a pizza parlor. If you were to put together a sports banquet, where would it be celebrated? At a pizza parlor. Pizza was even my wife’s last meal before giving birth to our daughter Sophia (it’s great for inducing labor).

So what exactly is pizza? Literally translated, the word pizza means pie. American pizza has a round crust that is made with a yeasty dough covered with tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and other ingredients, such as peppers, onions, Italian sausage, mushrooms, anchovies or of course pepperoni.

The first introduction to pizza in the United States is said to have come from an Italian immigrant named Gennaro Lombardi. He opened a small grocery store in New York City’s “Little Italy”. An employee of his (Antonio Totonno Pero) began making pizza as an item to sell at Lombardi’s store. It became one of the most popular items sold at the store, so much so that he opened the first American pizzeria in 1905 on Spring Street named “Lombardi’s”. Totonno opened his own pizzeria on Coney Island in 1924. Other pizzerias opened up around the United States, but its popularity was limited to mostly Italians immigrants.

Pizza finally crossed cultures within the Unites States when soldiers brought the idea back from Italy at the end of World War II. American soldiers ate the dish up during their Italian campaign and brought their appreciation for the dish back home. The singer Dean Martin’s famous 1953 song “Amore” later cemented pizza’s rising popularity with its opening line “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore”.

The term pizza parlor replaced pizzeria when the California restaurant chain Shakey’s Pizza opened up in 1954. Pizza Hut was also founded this same year in Wichita Kansas. Eventually Round Table Pizza made its debut and later home delivery chains like Domino’s, Little Caesar’s, and Papa John’s shifted the emphasis away from dine in pizza parlors towards eating freshly baked pizza at home. Even Pizza Hut and local pizza parlors have shifted there emphasis toward home delivery.

Why pizza is the best food ever!

Taste
Now I know that taste is personal, but there isn’t any other food that makes my mouth water like pizza. For some people it might be chocolate or maybe some other food, but my happy food is pizza.

Easy to make
Pizza is also a fairly simple item to make. Find your favorite crust recipe and the rest is simply picking out whatever topping you like. You can also simply buy pre made crusts or use French bread or beagles to hold your toppings.

Variety
Is there any other food that has as many varieties that pizza provides? You can literraly place any topping on a pizza and it would still be a pizza. Not to mention there are deep dish pizzas, New York style pizzas, California pizzas, Sicilian style pizza, crisp crust, and Calizone (omelet) style pizzas.

Delivery
What other food can you have delivered for you almost anywhere within the United States? Some delivery places are even open till the wee hours of the night making pizza a perfect late night snack.

Frozen pizza
Is there a better frozen food? I’ve tried many different frozen dinners and other entrees, but none of them have ever compared to the quality of a good frozen pizza.

Leftovers
My family has a tendency to keep leftover dinners in our fridge, but none of them ever get eaten. Pizza, on the other hand, always makes a second trip for a good meal. In fact, I love cold pizza for breakfast the next day!

Price
Pizza is one of those meals I can literally feed my entire family of four kids for twenty dollars or less. Pizza parlors always have certain days of the week where you can get a lot of pizza for little money and pizza coupons are as easy to find as are pizza parlors themselves.

Safe bet
If you were ever in a small town as a visitor and needed to find somewhere to go out to eat, pizza is by far your safest bet. Even bad pizza is edible. Although, the gourmet hamburger restaurant chain Red Robin once served a pizza on their menu that was pretty god-awful.

Family
Pizza is also a meal that brings the family together. Weather it’s dine-in, carryout, or delivery, pizza has a way of getting the family to gather. Not a small feat in the 21st century.

Best selling author Eric Shlosser began his book “Fast Food Nation” talking about the United States’ top-secret underground military base at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. He reported how Domino’s Pizza makes deliveries almost every night to this military base where deadly force is authorized on any intruders. Eric Shlosser writes:

“And should Armageddon come, should a foreign enemy someday shower the United States with nuclear warheads, laying waste to the whole continent, entombed within Cheyenne Mountain, along with the high-tech marvels, the pale blue jumpsuits, comic books, and Bibles, future archeologists may find other clues to the nature of our civilization—Big King wrappers, hardened crusts of Cheesy Bread, Barbeque Wing bones, and the red, white, and blue of a Domino’s pizza box.”

My college dorm room ceiling was a mosaic of many Domino’s pizza box tops collected throughout my freshman year. This memorial became part of one of the best years of my life and truly gave clues to the nature of college dorm life. Since that fateful day when my cousin Carl introduced me to a pepperoni topped pizza, pizza has been a significant part of my diet. One average slice of cheese pizza has 290 calories, 39 grams of carbohydrates, 15 grams of protein, and 9 grams of fat. When adding toppings you can make your pizza healthy or downright fattening. You can even add toppings to make your pizza a dessert. Whether it’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, desert, parties, delivery, carryout, dine-in, frozen, by the slice, deep dish, thin crust, folded, super markets, small pizzerias, large restaurant chains, malls, movie theaters, home, college, industry, office buildings, and military fortresses…pizza is simply unsurpassed in the American food empire.

You may be thinking, “Frommy, what’s so hard about coaching a girl’s c-squad team? It’s not varsity for crying out loud.” This line of thinking is why the job doesn’t pay as it should. However, the discerning language here is “girl’s c-squad”.

I’ve been coaching both girl’s and boy’s sports within the school district the past four years now. I’ve had undefeated teams who play at a peak level and teams still searching who’ve never won a game. I’ve coached A-teams, B-teams, and JV teams. But nothing has tested my years of training as much as my girl’s C-squad soccer team.

We’re not laden with talent, nor have we won a bunch of games (two), yet I knew this to be the case before I even agreed to the position. Sure, it is difficult to struggle through a season and not perform at a level I’m more accustom to, but it is the intricacies or underlying story that make this job what it is…easier said than done.

To date I have had at least half of my girl’s in tears. Not because they lost games, but because I’ve corrected deficiencies, furthered their fitness regimen, and was intolerant to passive-aggressive behavior. In other words, coaching.

Yes, I’ve raised my voice and have given unsympathetic stares. I’ve made them run and have scolded them for the sake of not listening or paying attention. I’ve sat girls for tardiness and not making practice, and have even told their boyfriends to go home.

Coaching these girls is the least of my duties, yet it is the only one I applied for when the position opened. The following items were not found in the fine print of the job posting:

• Must deal with athlete’s boyfriend.
• When an athlete is to spend the evening with one of her girlfriends, said girlfriend takes precedence over said game.
• Athletes may (will) schedule family vacations, doctor appointments, hair appointments, early-release to musicals, church, and extra curricular school events within season.
• Asking an athlete to run is merely a metaphor for I’m grumpy and I don’t like you.
• Speaking directly to an athlete is the same as yelling at the athlete.
• If one athlete asks to use the restroom during halftime or pre-game warm ups, expect to lose your entire bench for the duration.
• Sending an athlete up or down (e.g., from c-squad to JV) is the athlete’s choice, not the coaches.
• Practice attire is a fashion statement, not as a means to use for running, jumping, stretching, or the weather at hand.
• Body language is the expressive right of the athlete and should not be confused with or punished as a verbal confrontation.
• The school bus is a forum for the athlete to discus boyfriends, parents, and other girl’s behind their backs.
• Telling your athletes that they are out of shape is rude and the same as telling them that they are fat.

These and other items have fallen upon me as a coach this season. I’ve handled each situation with my fatherly know-how (grunt and groan) and have endured my inept moments with the little bit of grace I’ve been granted. That is, I’m continuing to struggle through what has been the most out of the ordinary of ordinary seasons. However, as the confounding becomes more commonplace and the season wears on I’ve began to appreciate my time, my team…my girls.

Next week we finish with three games and a depleted bench. I’m excited because two of the three games should be competitive giving us a chance to add one final victory. Also, I have girls who have shown tremendous improvement and are starting to find their way. In some ways I’m saddened that the season has finally come to end. I’m going to miss the attitude, the tears, and the long voluble bus rides home from games out of town. But every ending has a new beginning, and that also starts next week when seventh grade girl’s basketball tryouts begin…here I go again.

I’m completely out of shape…that’s for sure, but I was surprised at how much I was able to do on these bad knees of mine. I’ve hit a lot of balls around coaching at the High School and for rec teams, but actually playing is a whole different bag. It was a lot of fun to get out there on the field and I plan on doing it again the next time we have a parent scrimage.

I love the game and enjoy coaching and watching my kids play. Soccer is the one bond that I’m able to share with all of my kids, especially my daughter Paytyn. I love watching her play and enjoy shareing in the experience. Paytyn has been playing soccer for the past 5 years. Her athletic ability is exceptional, which makes it a whole lot of fun to watch her play.

Both my wife and I coach the game as well as played back in our High School days. My oldest daughter Sydney plays for the High School and my son MacKehen is beginning to pick the game up too. Mac has come out each week this summer with guys from my High School team. He has went from knowing virtually nothing to becomeing a player who can contribute as a Freshman at the JV level. My youngest daughter Sophie has even began to dribble the ball around. Next year she will be old enough to play on a team. I can’t wait to see those little legs moving up and down the field with all the purpose to kick the ball as hard as she can.

My summer has been spent going to tournaments every other week to watch Paytyn’s select team. I’ve also held summer practices for the High School boys and have begun tryouts for the High School girls. It has been fun to watch Paytyn play at such a competitive level. It’s also nice to have something to share as a parent with my kids who I love.

In the last few days I received and/or purchased some interesting new toys. Yes, I ordered something off an info-commercial. Yesterday I got my Air-O-Space sofa bed. This is a blow up sofa, recliner, lounger, and bed all in one. It is a portable paradise with arm rests. It is the ultimate man-couch! It has “man” written all over it. Only a man can truly appreciate the perfection this product holds. The reception my man-couch has received from my male counterparts has been the envy of the town. Most women, by the way, have not been as enthusiastic.

The man-couch is the perfect dorm room necessity. When my daughter’s boyfriend walked in the house and saw the spectacle at hand he immediately exclaimed “Where did you get that? That would be perfect for college!” He is getting prepared for his freshman year at Lynnfield. Needles to say, he right away saw the utilitarian function that was the man-couch.

The man-couch has already become the video game chair with my children and friends lounging out in front of my TV. Children (boys or girls) can appreciate the genius that is the man-couch. A man is truly a child at heart, and the man-couch offers a world of new possibilities. My 4-year-old daughter has begun to use the man-couch as a trampoline and has assembled it into a superb fort. My son has utilized its lounge configuration and has found a new haven in front of the TV. My 12-year-old daughter has used it to practice her guitar. My 17-year-old daughter, however, does not feel the hype…she’s grown too old and has lost her inner child.

I took the man-couch to one of my 12-year-old daughter’s soccer games this weekend. The thrill I got just thinking about the humiliation she would have to endure while I cheered from the sidelines on my air-sofa was all the motivation I needed to find a way to blow it up at the soccer fields. My son held the same passion, so he and I found an outlet that some venders plugged into and fired up the air pump. As the man-couch began to evolve out of thin air, the public passers-by began to huddle. Men stood helpless as their jaws dropped when they witnessed this evolution. Women cried for help as their significant others became paralyzed in awe. I smiled, nodded my head, and proclaimed with my chest protruding that “this is a man-couch!”

We had to carry the couch across four fields to get to where my daughter was playing. As we made our procession towards the field, a crowd of soccer fans rubbernecked and began to gather one by one for the man-couch parade. “Is that a couch?”, someone would yell out. “Where did they get that?”, someone else would mutter. “Is that for us?”, a soccer coach hopefully asked. “It is a man-couch”, I proudly proclaimed. When we finally got to my daughter’s field, chaos prevailed, and all ability to coach or be coached became impossible. The teams reserve players hurried and huddled over us. As my son and I sat down we yelled out “Go Paytyn!” Everyone, including the referees, stopped in their tracks for a brief moment as they took in what was presented to them. The game continued, but the couch held the attention of many spectators as they longed for a sit down. My daughters teammates soon became too much to contend with and we had to abandon ship. It was the first time I ever saw players asking not to go back in the game.

I’ve not since brought the couch back to the playing field for good reason. However, my daughter’s team did win the championship…can you say “good luck charm”.

There is one flaw however…no cup holders. I could make millions if I made my own inflatable couch with cup holders! I would call it the man-couch. My dream is to add on a man-room to my house with nothing but blow-up furniture. Can you imagine an inflatable coffee table, an air lamp, and a blow-up entertainment center! Until then my man-couch will have to do. One can dream.