Five-Right-Sideline

On old home videos, forgotten touchdowns, and the good stuff we accidentally erased

It was last Sunday afternoon. There was a DVD Player involved and some ancient, never-before-seen footage. But some familiar song lyrics were in my head:

I took my love, took it down

I climbed a mountain and I turned around

And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills

‘Til the landslide brought me down

I used to think those Stevie Nicks words from “Landslide” were about growing old. Turns out the song is more about being able to see the past for what it really was. More on that in a moment.

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I vividly remember our family’s first video camera. It was one of those that had to rest on your shoulder as if you were going to fire some sort of projectile out of it. But that didn’t stop us from taking it everywhere. The novelty of it was just way too cool. Back in the 1900s we didn’t have cell phones to record things. So, stuff would just happen in our lives and then it would be over. There was rarely much proof of what actually happened. You were lucky to get a Polaroid or a fuzzy photo from a camera with film that couldn’t be exposed to light for some reason. Rough times…

But when my dad brought home that first video camera, a whole new world opened up. We suddenly thought we were all incredibly entertaining. That first Christmas, we videotaped the entire Christmas morning scene. I’m pretty sure we videotaped fireworks at some point - never to be watched again. A video also exists of a dunk contest on a nerf hoop hanging on the closet door in my bedroom. There wasn’t a lot of jumping involved in that video, but there was a troubling amount of sweating and teenage bodies being slammed into closet doors. Anyway, I’m glad the video camera came around.

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Recently, my daughter Sydney came to our house, which is just what she does now on Sundays. I asked her what the plan was and she revealed we were about to watch old home videos. This meant that I had to figure out how to connect an ancient DVD player into our modern TV and then locate the remote that goes with that DVD player. This took a minute, but the effort was worth it because of the magic that was about to happen.

My parents had given us a video camera as a wedding gift. Hundreds of hours of our lives, now live in a box of DVDs in the basement.

Our daughter decided we would start movie watching with a video from 25 years ago. This 2001 Disc was from a time when we had two sons, one was a toddler and the other who was about 6 months old. Our girls hadn’t even been born yet. As we watched this old DVD, we realized we’d never seen this before. Like seriously, these scenes were totally new to us. It was like we were experiencing it for the first time.

There were videos of us playing with the little guys, putting kids to bed, bath time, birthdays, and even the first time my oldest son got on the school bus. I willingly admit, we followed the school bus in our own car and had the video camera trained on the back of that yellow machine the whole way until he got to school. Traci and I were immersed in the video. But multiple times our daughter turned to us and said, with a bit of surprise in her voice...

You guys were really good parents. Like really good.

Somehow in the videos we were, shockingly, both patient and fun. Those are not adjectives I remember as a young father. I think I remember more about the mistakes I made and the tough days and nights that are just part that stage of life. Never really thought of myself as a good young father. I knew my wife was awesome, but it seemed like she was having the same surprising experience as I was while we watched the videos. It was like the years had quietly erased all the ordinary, mundane, magical stuff we actually got right.

As years go by, I think we keep HD footage of our worst moments and seem to burn the tape on everything else.

Turns out I’m not the only one whose good work got a bit underremembered.

Today I thought about my own father. I thought about the sacrifices he made that I never recognized as a punk kid. For most of my growing up he traveled around the exotic Midwest Monday through Friday selling commercial refrigeration equipment. I suspect that wasn’t what he dreamed he would be doing when he was a kid. But he was great at it and provided for our family of 6.

In my teenage years, I thought about my dad the way most teenagers do. Only seeing him on the weekends limited what we could all do together. But inevitably when I got home from school on Friday afternoon, he would be there with his keys to the church, a basketball, and tube socks that looked straight out of the 1960s. I would call up my friends then we’d head to the “Mormon church.” In fact, my friends would often just come home from school with me because, well, that’s what we did on Friday afternoons.

Typically, my dad was the only adult playing with us. Those games at the church were a big deal to me. It was rare to be able to have fun with my friends and with my dad at the same time. I felt like I belonged there, and I felt just a little bit special because my dad was there with us. I didn’t tell him that enough.

During the fall and winter, big groups from the neighborhood would gather together to play football in our backyard. When he was around, my dad always played with us. He was typically the all-time quarterback. We played together so much that we had a specific receiver route that I would run that we would complete for a touchdown almost every time. In the huddle he would just look at me, smile, and say…

“Five-Right-Sideline”

A few seconds later I was standing in the end zone spiking the football. He knew I wasn’t the biggest or the fastest, but he got me in just the right spot to succeed. We totally killed most of the grass in our backyard with all the football we played. He liked to say, “I’m not raising grass, I’m raising young men.” At least that’s what I remember... It took years for that Kansas grass to grow back. I was well into college by then.

I don’t have those games on video, but I remember them. I hope my father does too.

My dad goes in for shoulder surgery today. He may spend some of his recovery time thinking about the ups and downs of the past. That’s just what we do – we judge the past pretty harshly.

But I’ve got a different memory playing on loop. A huddle. A smile. “Five-Right-Sideline.” And a church gym with sweaty dudes.

He was there. And I remember.

You’ve got a tape worth watching too. You absolutely do, whether on a screen or in your own memory. I hope you’ll take a minute to press play.