Blame Cannada

Are you guys okay?

That’s the text I got from my mom Sunday night. I don’t know if your mom has ever texted you something similar, but it’s kind of unsettling.

Nervous and curious to find out why she would be asking me this all the way from West Virginia, I responded quickly.

“Yeah, we’re fine. Why wouldn’t we be?”

I might be getting in better shape, but my body ain’t what it used to be.

As area football players gear up for the first week of full-contact practice, I can’t help but be overcome with nostalgia.

I remember my first practice on the high school football team like it was yesterday.

I wouldn’t make it in the military.

That much was confirmed last Saturday as I struggled through a day of boot camp as part of the “Warrior 101” crash course program, put on by the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office.

It happens every year. The sudden need and desperate desire to blow something up.

It usually doesn’t hit me until the sun begins to set on July 4. This year, I nearly ran out of time.

The entire world is enjoying the spectacle that is the World Cup and the United States remains stuck in the same old, tired discussion.

Will soccer ever “catch on” in America?

I think I speak for the entire country when I say, “What was that?’

I imagine very few things in life are as dissatisfying as the way Sunday’s World Cup match between the United States and Portugal ended.

Oh soccer, why did I ever abandon thee?

It only took a few seconds — 32 seconds to be exact — for me to pose that question, internally, while watching the United States squeak by Ghana 2-1 in the opening match of World Cup group play.