The U.S.A. men’s soccer team lost at the World Cup on Thursday! But we advanced to the next round anyway! Crazy tournament, this World Cup. We won even though we lost.
How did this happen? Only Gloria from “White Men Can’t Jump” can truly explain it.
“Sometimes when you win, you really lose. And sometimes when you lose, you really win. And sometimes when you win or lose, you actually tie. And sometimes when you tie, you actually win or lose. Winning or losing is all one organic mechanism, from which one extracts what one needs.”
Thanks for clearing that up, Gloria. Now on with the show…
We start this Good News Friday off with a cool father-daughter story. Some people love Google, some people don’t love them so much (I personally think they’re mostly on the side of good), but in this story, I think we can agree that there’s at least one boss there with a good heart.
A little girl named Katie wrote a letter to her Dad’s boss at Google, requesting that he be given a day off since it was his birthday.
The letter (above) reads:
“Dear google worker, “Can you please make sure when daddy goes to work, he gets one day off like he can get get a day off Wendsday. Because Daddy ONLY gets a day off on Saturday.” She signed the missive “From, Katie.”
Below that she put an emphatic postscript: “PS. It is daddy’s BIRTHDAY!”
And just in case that wasn’t enough, Katie added: “P.P.S. It is summer, you know!”
And you know what? It worked. Google gave him a whole week off (of vacation time).
Read Google’s response here on the “Today” show website, which ran the story.
Very cool.
**Next up, Thursday night was the NBA Draft, and for the most part it was a pretty boring, routine event like most drafts are.
Until this happened. Isaiah Austin was a star at Baylor University and was projected to be selected in the draft this year.
But a few weeks ago Austin, who is legally blind in one eye, discovered he had Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder that would end his career before it even got started.
Still, a dream of hearing his name called in the NBA Draft was made possible thanks to this beautiful gesture by Commissioner Adam Silver. This was so great…
**And finally, another “tales from parenting” story that yes, I seem to be running more and more of in this space as my impending fatherhood gets closer.
A hilarious writer named Lauren Laverne wrote this in the English newspaper The Observer last week, and my friend Amanda (a new Mom herself) sent it to me to prove to me that, like Laverne says, parenting will simplify your life.
Here’s an excerpt, but I strongly recommend reading the whole thing:
“We’re constantly being told to pare down, to be in the moment, to identify and pursue our goals. Lifestyle experts make wads of cash claiming they can help us: coaches, organisers, motivational speakers, declutterers, assertiveness trainers… A baby is all of these experts, rolled into a snuggly package of hope and meconium that you really quite inconveniently have to push out of your vagina or have removed with knives (these options: WTF). Your baby will be your life coach. Here’s how.
It will tell you what to do, all the goddamn time. Dealing with the entry and exit points of its food will take up 96% of your day. You will spend the remaining 4% figuring out how to make money to pay for food and nappies. At work you will become more motivated, assertive and efficient via a mixture of desperation, exhaustion and a distorted perspective on what you can achieve.
You made a human!
This fact will explode the boundaries of what you believed possible. Perhaps you can fly. Have you checked?”
Sounds great to me.
Wide World of Stuff 