Family is what you really want.

Abe is 10.  He doesn't really like football.  I mean watching football.  I'd say he severely dislikes it.  He wouldn't want to play it either.  Not really his thing.

Abe likes to watch Disney TV and Cartoon Network and stuff like that.

I don't watch much football anymore.  Weekends are usually pretty busy if I go for a long ride.  I don't have cable, so I have a lot fewer games to chose from than I used to.

But for the bowl games, I subscribed to "Sling."  Sling is streaming live television from a dozen or so popular TV channels.  It is 20 dollars a month.  ESPN is one of the channels so I have pretty much all of the bowl games.  I'll cancel Sling after the games are over.

I've spent several hours the last few days enjoying some of the most boringest bowl games I can remember for a long time.

Early Friday we got some bad news about some friends of ours.

This is a family that lives nearby.  Jill and I have been friends with the mom since we were teenagers.  I knew her from High School and Jill has been good friends with her since college.

Their kids play with our kids when they have parties/gatherings.

The family is losing the father from illness.  I came home yesterday to see the tail end of my wife explaining to our kids what was going on.

Abe was extremely upset.  Both children were sad and scared.  They were sorrowful for their friends losing their dad.  They were also contemplating "What if .."

A few hours later, I was watching a football game and Abe got into my lap.  He asked me if he could watch football with me.  This has never happened before.  He asked me why the numbers start to go back down after 50.  He asked me what "15 yard penalty" meant. He asked me question after question and I tried to answer as clearly as possible. It really is a difficult game to try to explain to somebody who's never watched it.

But I didn't mind.  Abe wanted to spend time with me because yesterday he became aware that time with me is finite.

I asked him if he'd rather watch the Disney channel. Like I said, the games have been fairly boring (lopsided victories).

I like watching the Disney Channel about as much as Abe likes watching football.

But I didn't care.  Neither did Abe.  He said, "It's fine.  We can watch football"

So we did.