Aug. 25, 2008

By Adam Lucas

Very few Tar Heel fans can claim fond memories of Florida State's 37-0 whitewashing of Carolina on August 30, 2003.

For most of us, that's the game when FSU's Greg Jones flattened Dexter Reid. See, not exactly a happy image, is it?

I loved that game. In fact, I have a picture of it right here on my desk. The stands are almost totally empty, the Kenan Stadium scoreboard is still flashing the unhappy scoring totals, and two very happy people are holding one very tiny baby.

That game was my daughter McKay's very first football game. In some ways, it was a suitable indoctrination for her--she saw a lot of other similarly unfortunate endings in her first five years of Tar Heel football--but I also wish she could have debuted with something a little more notable, like maybe the win over Miami in 2004 or Butch Davis's first home game.

Her sixth season opener will come this Saturday. But this one will be different. Because today, my wife and I took McKay to her first day of kindergarten.

Some of you won't understand. Those who do, please recommend a good therapist.

I was handling the idea of her going to school just fine until a couple days ago, when I asked her what she was feeling about her first day. Her answer:

"A little bit scared."

My entire reason for existence over the past five years has been to keep her from being scared. And now I'm causing it. It made me wonder what's worse: to have her be scared and admit it, as she's doing now, or be scared and not admit it, as she'll do when she's 13 or 14.

I don't think I want to find out.

That same night was Meet the Teacher. I am a sportswriter, which means my usual clothes selection process goes something like this: are these khaki pants clean? If not, are they clean enough to wear? And once that's settled, has anyone seen a Carolina polo shirt?

For Meet the Teacher, I prepared as though it was the senior prom. I actually had a conversation with my wife about whether I looked "too dressy" and what kind of shoes I should wear.

That was before I found out (And I'm not saying how, other than it starts with G and rhymes with "oogle." Hey, that's minor compared to the full FBI background checks I'm planning for McKay's first date) my daughter's teacher graduated from college in 2006.

Yes, my daughter is entering the most important year of her life and she'll be taught by someone the same age as David Noel. This presents the somewhat odd problem of wondering if I have to call the teacher "Mrs." if she's almost ten years younger than me.

My teacher fears were solved when I discovered the teacher in question--who I am leaving nameless in the hopes that she won't discover one of her students has a psycho dad--won something called the Dean Smith New Teacher Award in her first year in teaching. Those are credentials I can respect. You win the Dean Smith Award, you deserve to be called "Mrs.," and maybe even "Your Royal Highness."

Friends who have tried to make me feel better about today have invariably mentioned how much McKay will learn in school. They do not realize she has nothing left to learn. For example, just this weekend we were playing Connect Four and had the following conversation:

Adam: "McKay, do you want to be red or black?"

McKay: "Black. I don't want to be red. Red is for State."

Now that's teaching, folks.

I'm not ready for her world to change. It currently consists of ballet, Disney princesses (ours is one of the only households in Chapel Hill with equal levels of excitement over Saturday's season opener and Tuesday's release of Little Mermaid 3), and ice cream.

She is about to discover that in the real world, most families don't spend two weeks of their summer vacation in Omaha, Nebraska. We are certain that McKay believes all her friends wish to go to Omaha the same way they want to go to Disney World. And why not? In Omaha, they have Dippin' Dots, they sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and you can always wave to Dad up in the press box.

It was on our most recent trip to Omaha that real life began to emerge. After Carolina lost its final game of the College World Series to Fresno State, Chad Flack's sister, Ally, was in tears. McKay believes that Ally Flack is probably the coolest person in the world. To this day, when we play baseball in the backyard and someone else hits, McKay yells, "Go Chaddie!" Why? Because that's what Ally said every time Chad came to the plate.

But after that game, McKay seemed to realize that the Tar Heels don't win every time and nobody gets to play forever. For the first time--and probably not the last--she cried after a Carolina loss.

Most days, I work at home. For the past five years, I've had at least part of every day with her. Now I have Monday-Friday afternoons...when she doesn't have ballet. Or choir. Or friends to play with. Or even, yes, homework.

As we've talked about the idea of entrusting our daughter to the Chapel Hill public school system, friends have repeatedly told us, "She's going to be fine."

Well, of course. She is smart, she is social, and she is strong. Somewhere, in the part of my brain that deals only in reason, I know she's going to be fine.

It's me I'm worried about.

Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.