Look, I know I haven’t been there for you. I know that. No one who leaves the house to buy cigarettes and doesn’t come back for six years is drinking his coffee out of a father of the year mug, believe me. It doesn’t matter now why I left or where I went. Maybe you thought I was in jail, maybe you thought I was dead. Let’s just say that whatever you thought, you probably weren’t far wrong.
What matters now is that I’m home. And I’m not going anywhere.
Kip, you’re a ten-year-old boy. I don’t know what the hell that means. I’m looking around your room, and all I’m seeing is a bunch of plastic dolls wearing bike helmets and wetsuits, and I’m thinking…Jesus Holy Christ in the morning, I know how to sweat out the Bushmills shakes, I know how to bluff a Czech border guard on the midnight train out of Salzburg, but I haven’t got a clue how to relate to my own damn son. Well, I’m here to learn, Kipper. I’m here to learn.
One thing I do know is that all these years you’ve been going through some tough times and you’ve been doing it by yourself. Barnsley go through Liverpool and Chelsea to make the semifinals of the FA Cup, and you’re supposed to put that in perspective without me? Arsenal destroy Milan in the Champions League but fall apart at home and you’re supposed to make sense of that on your own? Is Avram Grant looking at a concrete trenchcoat? Have Everton got a decent shot at fourth? No offense, but being a kid is tough enough without you trying to understand this nonsense without help.
Well, that’s what I’m here for, now. Maybe we’re never going to be as close as we would have been if I hadn’t left. Maybe you’re never going to come to terms with what I did. But look, one day, I hope you look back on this time, and think, I reached an age when I needed to know whether Alex Ferguson’s purple-faced rant was pure comedy or a legitimate critique of the culture of refereeing. And that’s when he came back. That’s when Mom forgave him, and that’s when I started to forgive him, too.
I’m going track down a top-off for this Scotch. Hell, you’re old enough. You want a taste?
Read More: Schedule Update
by Brian Phillips · March 17, 2008
Good to have you back, man.
“I guess that is all there is to tell. The folks in town and the kids at school liked to talk about (him), to spin tales and speculate about him. I never did… He belonged to me.. and nothing could ever spoil that.”
“For mother was right. He was there. He was there in our place and in us. Whenever I needed him, he was there. I could close my eyes and he would be with me and I would see him plain and hear again that gentle voice.”
“And always my mind would go back at last to that moment when I saw him from the bushes by the roadside just on the edge of town. I would see him there in the road, tall and terrible in the moonlight, going down to kill or be killed, and stopping to help a stumbling boy and to look out over the land, the lovely land, where that boy had a chance to live out his boyhood and grow straight inside as a man should.”
“He was the man who road into our little valley out of the heart of the great glowing West and when his work was done rode back whence he had come and he was…”
Wow, Timoteo. Brian is Shane?
Welcome back Brian — no pressure or anything.
Hey, guys. Just to clear this up, I didn’t really see this as being written in the voice of Shane. However, I am Shane. Yes, indeed.
A little drunken Shane, mybe…but you are riding into our e-valley bringing truth and beauty (and as Bill Evans said, at the end of the day, that is what really matters), before mysteriously riding away with no explanation… but you’re back… Come back Shane!
Hell, I dunno, it just kinda fit, but maybe that was just in my distorted mind. Hell, I saw a connection between Eddie Murphy and an Arsenal goalkeeper so you know how twisted I am. And I love the Beautiful Game too.
Don’t worry, Timoteo, I knew exactly what you meant. Partly because I am, as I previously mentioned, Shane.
It’s gonna cost you more than a slug of whiskey you cheap bum.