There’s an old elementary school campus not far from my house. Four or five days a week last year after Zoom class, I’d take my little boy there to run around and play basketball on the cracked-up blacktop or climb on the abandoned playground equipment or play catch on the overgrown baseball field, which now resembles more of a meadow.
The campus itself, I should note, is partially leased out by the local fire department for training, and there’s a daycare that operates out of a couple of rooms as well—just so you don’t get the picture that I live in total dystopia. I mean, we’re edging close, but not entirely there yet.
Every couple days or so, a Great Blue Heron or a Great Egret would land in the field-meadow, and we’d lie on our bellies and watch them walk around with their rusty hinged knees pointing in the wrong direction.
A couple of times, I’d take pictures with my phone camera, but it always turned out looking like dots, so for the most part, we’d just and watch. Then they’d take off, and I’d sing out “cranes in the sky” like Solange, and he’d look at me like I was from another planet, and we’d go back to throwing the ball or him picking little pieces of sweetgrass and shoving them into gopher holes to “feed” them.
Yesterday, after a few days complaining of a sore throat, he was home from actual school and had to go see the doctor. Part of the district’s COVID protocol is they’re out for 72 hours minimum if they’re presenting any symptoms. This state of limbo we’ve somehow made permanent because people refuse to believe the Earth isn’t shaped like a quarter. Their capitalist grifter Jesus came along 2,000 years ago and turned water into wine for profit, which means women can’t choose what to do with their bodies. Now everyone’s horses have worms because of vile ignorance and white supremacist self-aggrandizement. So off to the pediatrician we went to get answers that weren’t there.
I’m now operating at a level where I’m assuming everyone is having a bad day. Not an “off” day, not a “Well, maybe things will get better once I get home and into my sweats” day. But a bad day. They know someone who’s suffering (or, more likely, saw it on the way to work); they’re missing someone who’s no longer here. They’re helpless in all the ways we’re all helpless. We’ve identified the problem(s) but the people tasked, even the “good ones” to fix it—aren’t. They’re just not. So we feel that much more helpless (helpless on top of helpless) as a result.
The doctor came in, and she looked harried, and this is now her natural state, I’m assuming. The place was packed. There were screaming babies heard three rooms away and the din of deep coughs of children echoing through the building the whole time. We had to go in the back way like it was some high-end club because the waiting room was too full. It was that kind of day. Every day is that kind of day.
I ran her through his symptoms as quickly as I could, knowing that this was probably priority eleven out of ten for her, but she did the right thing. She swabbed him for strep, then put on her hazmat gear and swabbed him again for COVID. She ran through care instructions while his labs came back and politely asked me if I had any further questions in a very polite but very “Please don’t ask me any questions” kind of way. It wasn’t rushed, but it was ...efficient.
I think we covered it. I looked over her shoulder as we were wrapping up, and my little boy was lying on the table facing up toward the ceiling and singing, “Craaaaaaanes in the sky.”
She turned and smiled. Was he having some fever dream? Taking himself to his happy place? What was happening? Then I looked up, and origami swans were hanging from the ceiling tiles. “Oh those,” she said. “Yeah, we wanted to add something that made it look a little more—bearable in here.”
She looked at me and shrugged. And she took off her gloves, gave him a high five, and told him to feel better “...and keep singing.” *wink*
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USC vs. Oregon State
USC quarterback Kedon Slovis who was projected to be a top-five QB in the 2022 NFL draft, is now fighting for his job against true freshman Jaxson Dart.
...The knock on USC since Pete Carroll left the program in sanctions purgatory in 2010 is the talent has always been there, but it has slept walked through it on the way to the next level. On-the-job training minus the glory.
USC interim head coach Donte Williams—under the headset just ten days but with a seemingly brand-new club that went and embarrassed antivaxxer Nick Rolovich almost as much as he’s embarrassed himself on a signature rainy day in the Palouse—suddenly has done what his immediate predecessor Clay Helton never did, score a lot of points.
He also has what Helton never did: a quarterback controversy.
Slovis had held USC’s starting quarterback job since the second half of the opening game of the 2019 season when JT Daniels suffered a season-ending knee injury.
But three days after watching a brand-new quarterback rally USC from down 14-0 to rattle off 45 straight points en route to a resounding victory at Washington State, SC offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Graham Harrell was ...noncommittal at best about who would be getting the majority of the time under center for the Trojans this season.
“We [need to be] loose, have fun and go out there and light it up,” Harrell said of the way USC’s offense played at Wazzu, a style that he inferred he hadn’t seen in, well, all the time that Slovis has been the Trojans’ starting QB; compiling an NFL scouts’ wish list of stats and accolades: 5,910 yards, 50 touchdowns and been named the Pac-12’s best quarterback in consecutive seasons—but also a notable absence of postseason accolades to go with it.
Both quarterbacks are coming off injuries following the trip north. Dart, who threw for 391 yards passing and four touchdowns—the most ever for a Trojan quarterback in their debut—missed Tuesday’s practice with a knee injury and is listed as day to day pending an MRI. Slovis was able to take snaps after his X-rays came back negative on a neck injury that put Dart into the game on Saturday.
The Trojans will face Oregon State on Saturday night at the Coliseum. And if Slovis is fearing for his job, he’s clearly not showing it behind the mic. “I’m not really focused so much on [Dart},” Slovis said after practice Tuesday. “I’m excited for him to get a great game, and honestly it’s what we expect. He’s a great player, great quarterback.”
“We just got to play whoever gives us the best chance to be successful,” Harrell said. “That’s always the goal, no matter the position or the situation.”
A new regime might mean more changes for the Trojans, and what works for them next week might not jibe with pre-season plans.
“Me personally, being the head coach, I approach everything as a battle,” Williams said, perhaps throwing a little shade at his old boss, the somnolent Helton. “I think part of why people don’t succeed and develop is because they get complacent. That’s not just at quarterback; that’s at every position. I want to make sure guys are never complacent.”
Williams has literal love for his freshman QB, putting a big old kiss on him after he uncorked for a 70-yard touchdown his second set of possessions under center.
“He’s out here making plays like that; I’ll make sure I keep kissing him on the cheek,” Williams said in the postgame.
On Sunday, Williams said he believes both quarterbacks are “more than capable” of leading the team. He noted the coaching staff has already drawn up a limited package for Dart ahead of Saturday’s game, with the hope to at minimum play him in third-and-short and red-zone situations “to give a wrinkle here and there.”
That SC now has less controversy and more ...offensive options (Dart moves more out of the pocket and throws better on the run) is bad news for the Beavers and the rest of the Pac-12. Williams’ ability to let Harrell, in his third-year calling from the booth, open up the playbook also seems a scary prospect as the calendar page turns towards October.
Take USC -12 vs. Oregon State and the over (63) at the LA Memorial Coliseum 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 25