7 posts shown.
I was looking at some recent projections regarding team valuations, and it’s honestly wild how quickly the numbers are ballooning. It feels like we’ve moved so far away from the actual game and into this realm of pure corporate math. It’s not even about the wins or losses anymore; it’s about the sheer weight of the brand name on a jersey.
It makes me wonder if we’re heading toward a breaking point. I remember when being a fan meant following a team because of the tradition and the atmosphere, not because you were tracking their projected market cap like a tech startup. When you start seeing these astronomical figures attached to student-athlete programs, it feels like the soul of the sport is being traded for a balance sheet.
Do you think these massive valuations actually benefit the fans and the players, or is it just a way to inflate the stakes for media rights deals?
Timothy Phillips said:I still hope this phase passes quickly. She is certainly enjoying herself. She acts like she runs her own universe, which is actually a healthy foundation for growing up. She is Self-aware and mature for her age, especially compared to some of the high school girls she hangs out with.
Please. When she lights up a cigarette, she looks like a total amateur... 😁 😁 😁
Timothy Phillips said:It’s not that she won't quit; maybe I was being a bit harsh, but she has really spiraled since starting high school this year. She used to just have a couple of cigarettes a day, but now she’s been smoking steadily for about a year.
I can't give you an exact dollar amount because, honestly, the cost isn't my main concern. If she's going through half a pack of slim cigarettes daily, you could probably estimate it at a few bucks a day—but regardless of what cigarettes cost in your area, health is much more expensive.
I’m not much of a smoker myself. I go days without lighting up, and I’ve tried quitting a hundred times. But truthfully, it seems to start at home here. My husband smokes even more than I do.
As for everything else, I don't have many complaints about her teenage years, except that she stares at her phone way too much, though I suppose that’s just a generational thing. Her schoolwork is fine; I really have nothing to complain about there.
Just enjoy it while it lasts. With everything available today, it's a puberty most would envy...
Timothy Phillips said:Trust me on this one—don't doubt it for a second. You better brace yourself. I was talking about puberty today with a colleague whose daughter is an eighth grader. She told me her class just got back from a two-day field trip. According to her, half the kids in that class smoke; these girls are out there puffing away right in front of their teachers like it's nothing. Looking at the photos from the trip, it’s all "mommy and daddy's little angels," and they aren't even trying to hide it. The teacher called a parent meeting after the fact, and the consensus is that this behavior has become an epidemic among this generation. Apparently, they were otherwise well-behaved—no drinking or illegal drugs—but cigarettes were everywhere. The woman was absolutely shell-shocked.
I just sat there listening in silence. I have a poser of a daughter at home who practically lives on cigarettes, so I'm hardly the shoulder to cry on regarding this topic. I chose to stay quiet, though. I didn't feel the need to justify myself to her.
Well, it's hard to imagine me being any worse than that at that age. If it's genetic, my husband is a bit of a pushover, so maybe she'll take after him, I hope... 👍
How old is your daughter? When you say she "won't put down a cigarette," what does that look like in actual dollars 😁? Do you smoke? Usually, it starts at home. In my day, everyone from the kids to the old folks smoked; nobody around me ever made a big deal out of it. Back when I was a teenager, I can't even remember what life was like without smoke. It's bad, I know.
If I tally up all the pros and cons being discussed here, the truth is that puberty is just puberty. I can't honestly say today's teenagers have it harder than our generation did, nor that they have it easier. Every era has its own set of struggles. I'll be facing this myself in two or three years when my daughter hits that stage, and if she shows even a hint of that attitude early in the morning, I know I'm in for a world of trouble...
rowdypanther12 said:I’ve always wondered where people used to find actual black nail polish back in the eighties. Back in '91, I was basically just mixing ink into my clear coat to try and get a dark shade, and it wasn't until around '93 that a friend visiting from London finally gave me some real black polish. 😂
Back then, trips to San Francisco felt like hitting up a massive supermarket. My aunt would bring back everything—cans of Coca-Cola, Levi’s 501s, cigarettes, makeup, chocolate, even music... If I recall correctly, most of that came through John Doe, and probably easy enough. When I hear that song again, I’ll have to ask her where she found that black lacquer from '87...
Actually, 501 belonged to John Doe, and there were several other items we could source locally, but the bulk of everything essential had to come from San Francisco. I never personally made the trip there, even later in life...
The weather was incredible...
My kid is nowhere near puberty yet, but thinking back to my own teenage years makes my skin crawl. It was a completely different era in the 80s; nobody gave a damn what kids were up to. In the summer, you’d be out the door in the morning and wouldn't come back until dark. No smartphones, no tablets, no security cameras—I was basically home alone from the first grade onwards.
Growing up, my mom's sister lived in the house next to ours—she was only eight years older than me and a total icon. She was obsessed with getting into art school, though she never made it. She leaned hard into the goth look, wearing ripped tights like it was a uniform, dyeing her hair black and red, listening to music I couldn't wrap my head around, and doing her makeup like Quincy from the Cure or Slađana Maddox. I remember being in fifth grade and raiding her makeup bag just to mimic her, then frantically scrubbing it all off with water and cheap shampoo before school. Once, she used black nail polish, and since I had nothing to remove it with, I ended up scraping it off with a nail file and a kitchen knife.
Around that time, I started stealing cigarettes at home—either from my mom or from my aunt, I can't even remember how. I still remember that first cigarette; it was a local brand, and I was just pretending to smoke because I didn't actually know how. This went on for months until my aunt finally caught me smoking her stash behind the house. She looked at me and said, "For heaven's sake, let me see if you're actually smoking." Then she realized, "You aren't even smoking properly, you're just puffing air." She told me to keep the cigarettes but warned me not to let my mother find out, or she'd kill both of us. Even as a little kid, I knew how to light up in front of my aunt, who didn't care much because she was just as rebellious as I was, acting more like an older sister than an adult... she just covered for me. By seventh grade, I was smoking for real. I always had some flimsy excuse to go visit my aunt, when really I was just going for a smoke.
That was also when I dyed my hair black for the first time, at my aunt's place, obviously. My hair is naturally dark, but not black, and when I showed up with the fresh dye job, my mom nearly fainted. She made me wash my hair five times just to dull the shine so I could at least go to school with my hair tied back.
That was the first and only time I ever dyed my hair, but I loved having a bit of makeup on. Back then, if you had a strict teacher at school, you better wipe that makeup off or they'd call your parents in for a meeting.
They caught me smoking at home pretty quickly, but they teased me more than they actually tried to stop me. Mom used to call me Grandma Hatidža, like that character from the prison, when she saw me smoking like a Turk despite being such a little kid. And back then, everyone was smoking, young and old alike.
Tattoos and stuff like that weren't a thing back then. I remember my uncle had one on his arm from his time in the military...
I did whatever I felt like doing until halfway through high school, but by 16 or 17, I had settled down. My first real love happened at 18; we waited for college until 19, and I stayed with him for three years until he moved to Germany and everything fell apart.