Just when you think things can’t get any worse, they do. I was distraught to hear the news this morning that J Lo and Marc Anthony are divorcing. What is this world coming to? Just a few weeks ago, they were practically having sex on the set of American Idol and we couldn’t think of two greater people to idolize. So beautiful. So talented. So successful.  So in love. Such adorable children, romping on the beach in those Gucci ads. I thought I’d faint when she looked adoringly into his eyes, the man she repeatedly told us she loved with all her heart. He looked back into hers, the woman he knew he’d marry the moment he laid eyes on her.

We wanted to believe it all. If we can’t have it all, surely two such incredible people deserve to. What could have  gone awry? Is she still in love with Ben Affleck? Has he fallen for Jennifer Aniston? Does she want to join The Peace Corps while he wants to move to Malibu? Does he want to send the kids to private school, but she insists on  public? Or maybe, just maybe, they’re really just figments of our imagination and this perfect pair never existed in the first place.

But what about those marriage vows they renewed, not once, but twice ? Don’t tell me they weren’t real. I will be inconsolable.

I believe people have to be nice to one another but I have spent entirely too much time humoring, placating or otherwise trying to please some miserable human beings who I can safely call certifiable creeps, including: A misogynist client who told one of my employees that she has “a nice chest,” a good friend’s haughty husband who asked me to compromise my business integrity, and an employee who shamelessly cheated on his expense account but was protected by my boss because he was “such a great salesman.”

I was nice to these assorted folks because I felt I’d lose something if I wasn’t. I’d lose a friend or a client or incur the wrath of my boss. As it turned out, it didn’t really help to treat these “people” as well as I did. The salesman’s business tanked, the client took his account away and the friend turned out to lack as much integrity as her pompous husband.

While there’s nothing to be gained by being nasty to unsavory or unpleasant types, I finally know that it’s a waste of time and energy to kill them with kindness.

I was never much of a player, especially in sports. My father signed me up for private tennis lessons when I was around eight (he was a great tennis player and probably thought it would be nice to volley with me at some point), but I hated taking them.  I was, in a word, a klutz.  Not agile. Not speedy. Not especially coordinated. I did enjoy volleyball for a time, but got bored with that.

 

Coach FOF Pia Sundhage

The US Women's Soccer Team

 

 

 

Girls weren’t encouraged to play many sports back in the day. The general consensus was that we were the weaker sex, at least when it came to physical activity. Even if we wanted to be on teams, most schools weren’t interested.  Title IX changed that. Signed into law, in 1972, by President Richard Nixon, the act prohibits sex discrimination in any education program or activity, within an institution receiving any type of Federal financial assistance.

We’ve come a long way, baby. The US Women’s National Soccer Team is set to play the Japanese team in the World Cup final on Sunday.  I wouldn’t have known a soccer ball if I fell over it in gym class in the sixties.

Congratulations to our young women. And hip hip hooray  to FOF Pia Mariane Sundhage, a Swedish former professional footballer who is the head coach of the  US Women’s National Team. You are definitely ON THE BALL.

The parents of a nine-year old boy in Brooklyn let him walk unescorted from day camp yesterday to meet them five blocks away.  He got lost, asked a man for directions and is now dead.  The man took the boy home, murdered and dismembered him.  I cannot get the images of a young lost boy out of my head.  He must have been frantic.  He lived in a community of ultra-religious Jews that overprotects its children far more than most. I am guessing the boy didn’t have a cell phone and didn’t know the streets well. Even if his parents taught him never to talk to strangers, he had to think the circumstances required it.

What FOF doesn’t remember Etan Patz, the six-year-old New York City boy who disappeared in 1979, after his parents let him walk alone to catch the school bus, two blocks from their apartment? My son was three-months-old at the time and the thought of Etan and his parents’ anguish haunted me for years. At the time, I couldn’t imagine being able to live through something so traumatic. Posters of the child hung on lamposts and in store windows for months.

Etan was never found.  It was as if he disappeared into thin air. It took less than a day to find the Brooklyn boy, but the discovery was unimaginable. I pray his mother and father have the faith and emotional strength help them survive their nightmare.