Friday, September 01, 2006

Hey, We Broke 40,000 Today

Just a Friday evening update to note another bloggy milestone.The Pure Florida counter just hit 40,000. It took a little over one year to hit the first 20,000 and about 2 months to register the next 20,000. Cool.

I just got back from a "Friday Nights Lights" experience watching our tiny school football team of multicolor poor public school kids do battle with a wealthy monocolor team from a wealthy private school that arrived in gleaming charter bus style buses.

Our team is tiny, a hodgepodge of skinny, fat, tall, and short kids. Everyone of them is on "free or reduced lunch" which is public school code for poor. The visitor's team looked like uberteens, all vaccuformed from the same hulking jock mold.

Even though I'm not a big sports fan, I love our football kids for their tenacity and never say die attitude. The fact is that mostly, they get beat. Still, they practice every day, and give it their all every Friday evening during the season.

I find that admirable.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats on 40,000 hits - you deserved every single one, and a whole bunch more. *hugs*

Anonymous said...

Yep, the tenacious spirit in face of loss will serve your kids well since, as we adults know, most of the rest of life is not filled with easy wins in anything. I hope the winning team had the sportsmanship to win graciously, but teens generally haven't developed that skill yet.

Anyway, nice post. Always makes me glad to visit and contribute my hit count to your total. (If it could only compare, I would boast about my 150,000 spam comment hits.)

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on your exponential climb into the stratosphere!

I used to have a knee-jerk cynical attitude toward student athletes until I actually started working with them. Their drive and the amount of work they put into their sport, equivalent to a full-time job sometimes, amazes me. I really don't know how they do it.

Anonymous said...

Keep up the posts. I look forward to reading each one.

-David

R.Powers said...

Mrs. S,
Thanks!I have not forgot about the recipe, sometime this long weekend...


Pablo,
Very true. If only they all had that same spirit in the classroom!

Wayne,
Me too. I teach kids whose sole motivation seems to be keeping their grade high enough to stay on a school sport team. Sports teach other necessary skills like competition, discipline, and the idea that you must practice a skill to improve it. Any positive thing that keeps an at risk kid in school is a good thing to me...whether it's band, football, or chess club.

David,
Thanks for the vote of confidence.