Over the years, with four kids, I have attended a fair share of sporting events, in which they were participants. Pee-wee football...soccer...swimming...track...baseball...volleyball. My problem is that I am not a very good spectator. I have trouble expressing much emotion or excitement from the sidelines or the stands. It may have to do with my upbringing and the lessons of not calling attention to oneself. Be humble, my dad used to tell me, because you certainly have plenty to be humble about. As a kid, I was always a little fearful of being told that I was getting too big for my britches...which, in those days, did not refer to my expanding waistline and the dangers of my middle being given its own zip code. (If you're thinking, "Well, wait a minute, you're on TV and radio almost everyday so you must not be exactly shy....your whole job is about calling attention to yourself!" Rest assured, I spend every waking hour, and many of the sleeping ones, be appropriately ashamed of myself for things I've said or done on the the air.) Anyway, I tend to clam up in spectator situations.

For example, the other day I was at my daughter's volleyball match. Samantha could well be described as a "sparkplug" or "firecracker" for her team. Sort of along the same line, my would-be coaches and team-mates often referred to me as the squad's "fireplug" just before cutting me from the roster. Well, there I was, sitting quietly in the bleachers watching the team fight for victory, pouring everything they had into the game. Parents sitting nearby were yelling their words of encouragement and cheering for the good stuff...clapping supportively in those less than stellar moments. I wanted to shout "Go get 'em, Samantha! Good serve! All right!" but the best I could do was to politely clap two or three times and say "...ahem....ah....whoo....(cough)..." under my breath.

In my own defense, I have to say that, at the volleyball game, at least I was paying attention. What I am about to admit will certainly remove me from any consideration as Father of the Year...not that I was ever in the running, anyway. There have been times...at a soccer match when my kids were very small and tearing around the field like little waterbugs in green shirts or at a swim-meet after inhaling so much chlorine that my hair turned green from the roots outward or at a track competition when I've realized that for the whole deal I've thought the wrong kid was one of ours...there have been times when my mind has wandered. As I mentally drift from the game at hand to questions of which bill is due when, to what time the Andy Griffith Show reunion program is on later that evening, to how much longer I can drive on tires where tread is but a distant memory, all of a sudden I'll hear a big cheer go up and start applauding enthusiastically, only to realize the excitement was for the opposing team. You haven't experienced true fear until you look around you and see the glares of other parents, wondering what you are doing, apparently, cheering for the opposing team!

It isn't just sporting events that make me inhibited. I even feel self-conscious clapping and singing along to music at a concert. I am almost certain, at a show last December, that Neil Diamond wrote down my seat number because I just barely moved during Sweet Caroline while the rest of Kemper Arena was in full- involvement mode. You may think I'm being paranoid but how else can you explain that, for months following the concert, everytime I went to my car there was a present from the feathered colon of Jonathan Livingston Seagull on my windshield and, regardless of which radio station I was tuned to, the first song I'd hear was Solitary Man. Neil Diamond has powers none of us can fully comprehend.

My kids have cut me some slack on my lack of spectator skills. They claim they actually appreciate my not calling attention to the fact that I am their father, at all. In fact, they deny our relationship at every opportunity...just to make me feel better. What a great bunch of kids...so, if you'll indulge me: "Whoo. Whoo."