PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The children nudged forward, like racehorses at the post. Some wore purple shirts, some wore blue.
“Are you ready?” someone yelled.
“YES!” they screamed back.
Usually, kids are dying to get out of school. These kids were dying to get in. A ceremonious ribbon was cut. Not a real ribbon. Pink duct tape. It’s Haiti. Close enough.
Snip! The kids raced through the doors.
And a small rainbow spread over the future.
Matthew Stafford wore black on gray. Not a good sign. He limped across the locker room. Not a good sign. X-rays were coming, he predicted. Not a good sign. And when someone asked if it was a knee or an ankle or both, he pursed his lips and said, “I can’t really tell right now.”
Not a good sign.
There are certain sounds that are pure childhood joy. One is the clomping of little feet up the stairs. Another is the squeal of delight.
This past week, in a freshly renovated house in Detroit, those two sounds came together. Seven children. Running up the stairs. Running into bedrooms.
Cue the squeals.
“I call this one!” … “This one!” … “I got the top one!” They were laying claim to something every child ought to have – a bed – but they were giddy because they had been sleeping three to a mattress in a dingy house infested with mold.
Now this?
Contrary to YouTube, the story at Ford Field on Sunday was not Jim Schwartz versus Jim Harbaugh in The Battle of the Postgame Handshake. True, you don’t often see one coach, Harbaugh, so pumped up he almost whacks the other coach, Schwartz, into next week. And true, you don’t often see one coach, Schwartz, chase 25 yards after the other coach, Harbaugh, until a skirmish breaks out near the tunnel and players are putting their helmets back on.
(On a side note, it is nice to see two NFL coaches in that kind of shape. Can you imagine Rex Ryan trying to chase down Andy Reid?)
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