Tag: comparison

Imagine dropping $120 for some Jerry Seinfelds

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SI: New Balance releases the 950s, featuring Cooper Flagg as their figurehead; retailing at $120

Initially, I wanted to write about how such a retail price is contrary to the supposed quote by reigning NBA Rookie of the Year, Cooper Flagg, where he stated that he wanted his first signature shoes to be priced at $35, so that all kids could afford them, but there’s a lot of claim that such quote was bogus, and so I don’t want to risk looking like an incorrect asshole, so I’ll disclaim the ambiguity of the quote.

However, if he did say something along those effects, and New Balance still said naaaahhhh, here’s your shoe, and we’re going to sell it for $120, then egg on Cooper Flagg for allowing it to stand, but let’s be real here, high integrity isn’t necessarily something basketball fans expect from those dudes who went to Duke.

I mean in all fairness, $120 isn’t a horrible price, considering the fact that just about any signature released by Nike or the Jordan sub-brand usually starts at like $200 and goes only up, and often time results in a couple of fatalities throughout the nation as overzealous sneakerheads resort to violence over some fucking sneakers.  But $120 is still a price point where the purported youngsters that Cooper Flagg had in mind probably still can’t afford, which then kind of defeats the purpose for that price point in the first place.

Especially when, when the day is over, the 950s are basically New Balance-branded knockoffs of Nike Air Force Ones, in that they’re all-white sneakers that look like Jerry Seinfeld would wear on the set of Seinfeld.  And then the question becomes, why the fuck would anyone pay $120 for bootleg AF1s when, if you play your cards right, you can get the OG AF1s for less than that.

Either way, I know that they dropped almost a month ago, but I’m just finding out about them now, and just about everything about this whole release seems like kind of a flop.  They’re overpriced clones, look like dorky Forrest Gump shoes, and if Flagg actually had claimed he wanted his shoes to be cheaper, then they failed there too.

But really, what really made this post into reality was the want to photoshop together imagery of Flagg with Jerry Seinfeld, united in their dorky all-whites joints.

Flock camera haters wouldn’t last 4 seconds in Korea

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks and months, I’ve been hearing about Flock cameras and how there are a lot of people who seem to be vehemently opposed to their existence.  Not only have haters been vandalizing, sabotaging and outright destroying them – FOR ‘MURICA, apparently there’s been a lot of controversy over police using the tech on the backend for less-than-ethical means, leading to a surprising amount of discipline towards a group of individuals who have been seemingly immune to the consequences of oversight over the years.

As far as punishing the po-po who have been supposedly abusing their access to Flock camera information, a lot of context is missing, and very little details ever seem to be given in regards to what curious cops are doing with Flock camera data, although it must be pretty substantial for them to actually be receiving disciplinary action, considering all manner of abuses of power, such as driving like shitheads and killing minorities tend to get swept under the rug, but god forbid these guys access surveillance without proper authorization, so I only have so much opinion on them, although I can’t imagine it would improve if we the people were actually given any further information.

But regular people, the Joe-Schmoes of the world who are getting so bent out of shape over the presence of Flock cameras, this kind of fascinates me.  In one hand, I get that it does kind of suck to know that there is an increase of Big Brother-ing by, for lack of a better term, the government, that frankly nobody asked for, and people, especially ‘Muricans, generally don’t respond well to the idea of being surveilled.  But in the other hand, my general take on surveillance is that, if you’re not doing anything sketchy or illicit, what does it matter if you are being potentially monitored?

It’s not like Flock cameras are sprouting like mushrooms and fungus during the summer humidity, from what I can observe, it’s usually areas near schools, busy intersections and high-traffic roads in which they’re installed.  Most of the time it looks like they’re installed in areas closer to schools with a primary objective of busting all the shitheads who drive too fast in school zones and having an automated means of issuing citations without a human cop to do it.

Additionally, ‘Murica is too cheap to plant these things in places without just cause, and I don’t think they’re randomly positioning these without any sort of data or justification.  They seem to be placed on major veins and well-traveled roads that suspicious people could potentially use, and should the need ever arise to try and locate a suspicious person, they could triangulate a location better with this kind of footage.

Frankly, I like to believe that they’re being placed in areas where people actually might care more about the crime rates of the area.  On the flip-side, I bet there are few or no Flock cameras near my old house on the south side.  And if there were, I’m sure that’s where there’s destruction of property, because the crime rate down there was already high, and the last thing any of those crooks would want is anyone having the chance to surveil them and possibly increase their odds of prevention.

I kind of get it though.  On the simple preference of if you would mind being watched over having greater privacy, I’d probably pick the privacy myself.  But considering that decision has been taken away from me, at least in areas where there are Flock cameras, I’m not sweating anything, because I don’t (at least I hope) practice in any nefarious or shady activities that I would be concerned about being monitored over, especially to the point of where I need to go sabotage and destroy government property.

The funniest part about the above image is the planting of the American flag in the destruction of a Flock camera.  It was clearly done in a manner in which the flag is acting not just as a symbol of defiance, but straight up like a middle finger.  This is the kind of shit I’d imagine like Ukrainian forces doing over a pile of dead Russian soldiers, or like when in 2006, the Korean national baseball team defeated Japan in the World Baseball Classic and planted their flag on the pitching mound, causing Ichiro to crash out.  But with these incidents of Flock camera destroying it’s basically ‘Muricans giving the middle finger to, America, and I often don’t believe there’s any country in the world that hates so much of its own country more than America does.

Speaking of Korea though, getting back to the title of this post, the people who hate Flock cameras, they most definitely would not last four seconds in Korea.  From the busiest neighborhoods in Seoul to the shittiest back alleys in like Pohang, there are CCTV cameras covering probably 75% of the entire peninsula.  My mother-in-law and I walked through a historical park that was pretty wooded and nature-y, and wouldn’t you know it, CCTV cameras were affixed to live trees, monitoring over the walking trails, and at multiple points during our trip, I’d remind her that the cameras were everywhere.

And they’ve got surveillance teams in surveillance rooms that look like Avengers HQ with how many screens and cameras they all have to monitor at all hours of the day.

Yeah, if Flock-hating ‘Muricans are up in arms over a few cameras going up along busy streets, I don’t think they have the perspective to know things could be way, way, way worse, compared to places like Korea, where surveillance is 70% more big-brotherly and privacy is way lower.  But again, if you’re not doing anything wrong, what does it really matter?

World Cup 2026: in the end, futbol prevails

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I tongue-in-cheek declared the World Cup over after Mexico and the United States were bounced from the tournament nearly two weeks ago, I obviously still watched the remainder of the matches, and the tournament did a little roller coaster in that span and in the end, everything seemed to work out, kind of beautifully, and I find myself wanting to write just one more post about the World Cup, and how it’s truly sad to see that this magnificent journey, has come to an end – officially.

It’s interesting, because I don’t think I was really wrong about how the general fun and the feelings of elation and celebration of futbol were kind of sucked out of the tournament once Mexico and the US were eliminated, because fans of sport and story alike all love a good Cinderella story, and both were in the midst of impressive runs, before they hit the walls of Eurpoean opposition.  And once the pretenders were bounced, the World Cup kind of devolved back to its typical state of serious business, where the real contenders of the Cup were the last ones standing, and all of the remaining matches were these super serious affairs, between super serious futbol countries.

One by one, I found myself rooting for the lower seeds of all these matches, like Norway against England, Belgium against Spain in spite of their terse domination over the US, and true to the whole anyone but Argentina mentality, the Swiss as well.  And in each case, they all lost, reinforcing the notion that the World Cup always ends up being a race between the same pool of countries, narrowing down to a final four of countries that have all won a Cup at some point.

By default, I found myself pulling for France over Spain, because I had put France down as my champion in my work bracket that only three people participated in and I’m pretty sure the other two have already forgotten about it, and England over Argentina because they were the team opposing Argentina, plus it was hard to root against a guy like Jude Bellingham who seemed so talented on the pitch while being so charming off of it.

So naturally it ended up being the surgical dismantling of the French by Spain, who I didn’t even notice had only allowed a single goal the whole tournament to this point, and Argentina beating England after several days of artificial build up, swirling around all of the ugly and nasty factors of why people outside of their fans were all seemingly souring on Argentina, in a hard-fought contest, that naturally ended in controversy, with the generally classy Jude Bellingham almost coming to blows with an Argentinian bench scrub after FT.

Going into the final weekend, it basically boiled down to France vs. England in the notoriously seemingly unnecessary third-place match that neither team was going to care about, and a match between the Colonizers versus the Racists, where it was surprisingly easy to be pulling for the Colonizers, solely based on the fact that they were not Argentina.

Usually the third-place match is a pointless match that doesn’t mean anything to most participants, especially if it’s a clash between powerhouses like France and England.  It’s my belief that such is usually the case, except when it involves a host nation and/or a Cinderella surprise team, like when Korea found themselves in the third-place match against also-upstart Turkey in 2002, where both teams let it all hang out trying to end their journeys with a W, which naturally Korea would lose, but the fact of the matter is that they actually cared.  But the last few third-place matches have been apathetic and unwatched, and there was little reason to believe this one would be any different, seeing as both had high aspirations to win it all, and anything short of that was just failure.

But I happened to catch the third-place match, and at first it wasn’t really anything out of expectation, with both France and England emptying out their benches and letting everyone who had been wearing the pinnies throughout the tournament start, save for Kylian Mbappe for France whom most had suspected was going to be playing in order to take and possibly ice the Golden Boot award from Messi.

And England raced to a quick lead, scoring two in pretty quick succession, and going into half with an absurd 4-0 lead.  It was clear that neither team was really trying too hard, with the goals being all the younger players getting some international experience, as well as everyone just trying to avoid getting hurt.

The second half starts, and someone reminded Mbappe to go get his Golden Boot, and he scores two in the next 20 minutes, France closes the gap to 4-3, England stretches it out to 5-3, France closes it back to 5-4, and at some point around the 80th minute, Jude Bellingham, who had started on the bench, checks into the game, and goes on this ridiculous run and scores England’s sixth goal right before FT.

It was an absurd exhibition, but the primary thing about it all is that it genuinely looked like both teams were having a blast, and just having fun.  It was a true international friendly between two teams who had been facing extreme pressure over the last week, and I felt as if it was probably really cathartic for all the players, especially guys like Mbappe and Bellingham who had probably been facing the most pressure, being the scoring aces for their countries, and it was really refreshing to seeing everyone being smiles and laughing, and after FT, all hugs and respect from all participants.

A surprising A+ third-place tilt, from what everyone had written off as a pointless exercise.

And then we get to the main event, where there’s not much to really say that hasn’t already been said at this point – Spain defeats Argentina, ending their insufferable onslaught, bringing relief and joy to futbol fans, old and new, almost entirely based on the fact that Lionel Messi and Argentina were denied the World Cup trophy, as well as FIFA who did very little to combat the narrative that they were trying to manufacture their victory.

It was an interesting affair from start to finish, with entertaining tidbits throughout the whole event.  The orange shithead getting booed the fuck out of New Jersey (no ‘and New York’ bullshit here, the match was in New Jersey and only New Jersey), Argentina playing dirty as ever, drawing five yellow cards, including two satisfying ones by the especially dirty-playing Enzo Fernandez, resulting in his ejection, and FIFA officiating doing absolutely everything they could in order to favor Argentina, with countless non-calls for Spain and a parade of bonus free-kicks and stoppage time that benefitted Argentina.

But the thing with futbol, as well as any sport or competitive contest, a competitor must attempt to score points in order to have any chance to win a contest.  I was apoplectic in 2018 when Korea took zero shots on goal against Sweden, so I can imagine the collective rage and anxiety and frustration from Argentinian fans, when their team took a big fat zero shots on goal, and it was very evident that their entire game plan was to get the game to penalties, if the refs couldn’t help them manufacture a scoring chance, to help negate Spain’s legendary tournament-wide defense, and this was magnified when Enzo was booted, and they had to play a man down for the remainder of the match.

However, Spain persevered the stacked deck against them, and 30 seconds into 2OT, scored their goal, which would be enough to overcome a dirty opponent with tournament-wide favor from FIFA.

Argentinian players and most importantly, their front-running fans were sad.  Unsurprising, the amount of post-match respect and congratulations were minimal.  The Argentinian fans were sad.  The orange shithead made (yet another) an embarrassment of himself, photobombing the Spain celebratory trophy hoist.  Argentinian fans were sad, and got the fuck out.

Futbol prevailed.

What a wonderful World Cup this was.  I’m sad that the whole thing is over now.  2030 has an insanely high bar to live up to, after how fantastic this one was.  But looking forward to it already.

World Cup 2026: the global heel turn of Argentina

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I thought about waiting until after the finals of the World Cup to write this, but I realized that it doesn’t matter.  With it being Spain vs. Argentina in the final, it’s basically a match between the Colonizers versus the Racists in a matchup between two top-4 FIFA ranked squads, and at this point I’d say that I’m pulling for Spain solely because I’d been hoping anyone at all could stop the freight train that is Argentina, but there’s little reason to believe that all the memes, narratives, accusations and perceived favoritism towards Argentina is going to let up at this point, and it seems like the inevitable is going to remain, inevitable.

And that’s what this post is basically about, how throughout the course of this World Cup, it seems to me that Argentina has gradually gone from defending champions and home to Lionel Messi, to this gradual, increasingly disliked squad that everyone outside of Argentinians and/or front-running bandwagoners are rooting against, and the deeper that Argentina has advanced into the tournament, the stronger the disdain seems to be growing.

From what I have been observing, it has been because of several factors:

  1. Lionel Messi is getting the Shohei Ohtani treatment, as in absolutely anything and everything he does is being glorified ridiculously out of proportion. A goal?  An all-caps Twitter tweet from every single sports outlet on the planet.  An assist?  ALL CAPS.  Converting on a PK from penalty drawn by someone else?  ALL CAPS.  His reaction after a match?  ALL CAPS.  Like Ohtani, I have little reason to believe that Messi is actually a horrible person, but when the media is forcing him down everyone’s throats, resentment begins to creep upward.
  2. FIFAvoritism – with each match it becomes harder and harder to deny these accusations, and the public have gone from what they’ve been seeing with their own eyes, to internet bean counters statistically making nifty charts to document the perceived favoritism Argentina has been getting as far as things like strength of schedule, fouls drawn versus the fouls they commit, how many times VAR has ruled in their favor versus against, and just the narrative that FIFA is doing everything in their power to tip the scales to constantly be leaning favorably for Argentina, be it referee selections, locations of their matches. As the tournament has progressed, we’ve the growth of numerous memes, with my favorites being VARgentina, Fix It For Argetnina and Get yourself a partner that looks at you the way FIFA looks at Argentina.
  3. Historical – One thing I’ve enjoyed throughout this World Cup are all the historical jokes that have been made throughout the tournament, poking fun at events like the Revolutionary War, colonizing done by various countries, and other historical factoids, shaped into futbol matches. I didn’t know this, but it’s through the World Cup that I learned that Argentina is where many Nazi/German/Axis people fled to after World War II, and the correlation many have pointed out how their futbol squad basically has nobody of any dark pigmentation, especially compared to the numerous Latin countries’ rosters.  And that perception alone is worth drawing a lot of hate from the internet and casual sports fans.
  4. THAT’S RACIST! According to my au pair, Argentina is a pretty racist country.  Their history of having racist refugees seeking asylum there probably has something to do with that, but there’s still a ceiling to her opinion since she’s Brazilian, and they hate Argentinians like I hated Marylanders growing up in Virginia, and how I look down on Alabamans as a Georgia resident.  But then you have the coach of Egypt throwing up the crossed arm X gesture, signaling for racism during a match, grumblings from players from Cabo Verde saying they heard some racist remarks, and most recently England’s Jude Bellingham angrily getting into it with Argentina’s bench warmers after what appears to be in reaction to something he heard one say, and given the fact that he’s a person of color, people are making assumptions, and perhaps my au pair isn’t just being a nationalistic neighboring rival.

But above all else, is the fact that Argentina just keeps winning, and it seems like inevitability that they’re going to be the first repeat World Cup winner since Brazil repeated in 1958 and 1962.  Like the MJ’s Bulls, Kobe’s Lakers, Tom Brady’s Patriots, and Shohei Freddie’s Dodgers, everyone begins to turn on the winning teams, especially if they start developing large numbers of bandwagon and/or disingenuous fans.

Circling back to #2, it’s not even like Argentina really needs any help from FIFA or anyone who may or may not be moving things around to ensure that they win.  Argentina is the defending champs and ranked top-4 for a reason, and even if they weren’t getting excessive favoritism from refereeing, they still have to make the crosses and accurate headers and kicks and get the ball into the back of the net.  They’ve been living life in time after 90’ with all sorts of late-match dramatic goals against Egypt, Cabo Verde, Switzerland, and England, and favoritism or not, they’re making incredible scores happen.

It’s funny, because from colleagues and sports fan friends I speak with, I don’t think I’m along in seeing the things I’m seeing, especially with Argentina’s heel turn.  At the same time, this World Cup has also witnessed the increasing love-fest for Mexico, helping eliminate decades worth of character assassination of their country, mostly from the United States, as people from all over the world have seen how vibrant, lively and generally welcoming Mexico has been throughout the course of the tournament, with many pointing out just how quickly things simmered down in the excitement department, once Mexico was eliminated and matches were no longer being held in Mexico.

Regardless, whether Argentina wins the World Cup or not, I think the heel turn has already been completed.  It’s not that people really want or care if Spain can defeat them, it’s all about just wanting to see them lose.  And I guess if futbol really did operate in the wrestling bubble, just getting people to have that reaction, negative as it may be, is still win, especially if it draws money.

Finally, some #TRYHARD answers

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

ABC7 Chicago: Gary, Indiana teen with “perfect 4.0 GPA” accepted into 126 colleges, amassing $9M in cumulative scholarship offers

Gary, Indiana must’ve never heard about Westlake High, because 126/$9M seems kind of mid in the grand spectrum of the #TRYHARD game.  Also, I put perfect 4.0 GPA in quotes above, because not long after discovering the Florida nerd with the 11.99 GPA, the whole concept of grade point averages has been blown out the door, and every number warrants questioning and examinations that nobody wants to have to do and it sucks to be a egghead teenager today in that regard.

Anyway, not that I really wanted to get back in the swing of documenting teen #TRYHARDs left and right like I did that one year, this particular story came of interest to me for one specific reason: it appears to have shed a little light on the whole #TRYHARD game, namely potentially answering one of the biggest questions I had about the game as a whole itself: how are all these kids able to apply to so many colleges without seemingly having to worry about those pesky things called, application fees?

Apparently, there’s a site/service, CommonApp, where there are 1,100 schools on the platform, so it’s apparently easy to make a profile and fling it out like Gambit to any and all schools available; many of which seemingly have no, or are willing to waive, those pesky application fees.  I don’t care to dig into just which schools are on the platform, but imma guess many notable and nameworthy ones, based on the cache of schools that have been mentioned by #TRYHARDs throughout the years.

Welp, that answers a lot of questions I’ve always had in regard to how these #TRYHARDs are applying to hundreds of schools.

Anyway, before I wrap on this post, a few things I want to clown on:

[They had] a perfect 4.0 grade point average and is ranked second in [their] class.

Second?  If they’re ranked second in the class, what does first place look like?  And why aren’t they making the news?

[They] did have to write about 30 essays to go with some of the applications. But [they] says it was worth it.

30 essays?  Oh the humanity!  Oh the strain, the labor, the exhausting ordeal!  Lmao, I could knock out 30 essays in a day, but then again, there’s nobody I know who has been writing as much and as long as I have, and even Jerry Seinfeld probably has taken more breaks than I have.  But if 30 essays was the cost for not having to pay application fees, I would’ve written 100 to not have had to pay for the 3 colleges I paid to apply to.

And in true #TRYHARD fashion, I can’t seem to find any intel on where they actually picked.  This article originally dropped in March, and decision day was back in May, but no information on where they ultimately chose, which goes to show that once the initial news of #TRYHARDing breaks, frankly nobody cares what happens afterward.

The ultimate high school #TRYHARD?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NYP: Florida teen graduates high school with a mind-bending 11.99 GPA; prompts district to reexamine policy

Man, I thought I was a big deal when I was rocking a 3.8 GPA my senior year.  Meanwhile, this ubernerd is taking 44 AP classes, and college courses, completing their associate’s degree before finishing up high school, and I guess solved the meme-like riddle of how people can accumulate four years experience for entry level jobs.

Seriously though, when I was in high school, the defining standard of excellence was how close to a 4.0 GPA one could get to.  And in only the rarest of instances, you’d see kids nail that 4.0 or even exceed it by like 0.1 or 0.2 because of the two AP courses they took their senior year, and then they’re the class valedictorian.

But over the #SZNs of watching #TRYHARDs race across America at who can outdo others, we’ve witnessed ultra-competitive #TRYHARD students start notching GPAs that have crossed into the 5’s and even 7’s, en route to them being accepted into 162 colleges with accumulated scholarship offers eclipsing multiple millions of dollars.

And then we have this mensch down in Florida who attended George Steinbrenner High,* who somehow manages to get an astounding 11.99 GPA, and obviously the first question that comes to the minds of most rational observers, other than what a huge fuckin’ nerd, is, hoowwwwww???

*there’s a joke somewhere about how there’s actually a school named after the former, free-spending wheeling & dealing owner of the Yankees but I can’t figure one out

Don’t get me wrong, as obnoxious as the self-promotion and humble-bragging can get, I’m all for kids getting competitive over academics, as opposed to dumb TikTok trends or petty larcenies, because at least these brats might be learning some useful knowledge in their journeys, but hopefully they’re doing it because they want to be smarter, and not because it’s a route for internet notoriety.

Because as impressive as the feat was, I question the motivation behind it if the goal was merely to surpass the #TRYHARDs before them:

noting that [their] top aims were to “become valedictorian” and “break the state GPA record.” 

It’s worth mentioning that the Florida state GPA record before this kid was 11.84, so it’s not like this kid had broken into completely uncharted territory.  The academic policy was already busted, allowing kids to take questionably high and probably ethically risky course loads at young ages, it’s just that it’s now coming into question because it probably didn’t have the magnitude of spotlight on it previously.

But it does make me wonder if the kid really had the thirst for knowledge to take such a demanding course load, or if it was the equivalent of figuring out what he had to take in order to hit the XBOX achievement, and then going for solely that.

Considering the fact that they’re going to Duke, there’s always the innate possibility that the latter is very much in play.

The funny thing is, one of my knee-jerk reactions to the story was after picking up my jaw after seeing 11.99, was the obvious joke that although everyone might think it’s astounding at first to see such a high GPA, their minority (obviously) parents were probably completely unsold on it, and wondered why they didn’t get a full 12.0 GPA instead.  Like, what careless error on their quantum physics scantron did they get wrong that dropped them down to 11.99 and cost them the chance for immortality of 12?

Moving onto the proposed overhaul of school policy, #TRYHARD’s county realized the absurdity of someone being able to get such an astronomical GPA, and although they’re impressed, it sounds like they want to change things to where such shouldn’t be possible again; unsurprisingly, the nerd who just set the bar is all for overhaul, because it would effectively lock their GPA into immortality and basically prevent anyone in history from ever challenging it.  It’s like when a heel wrestler aspires to win a championship blet, so they can retire it and be the last guy in history books to hold it.

Either way, the question remains where this kid lands in the annals of #TRYHARDs.  The GPA and course load were of couse legendary, but without any background of how many colleges they applied to, how many they were accepted into, and how much scholarship offer money they amassed, we’ll never truly know.  But perhaps that’s the point, and much like they’re trying to slam the door on any future challengers to their record, by not disclosing the base counting #TRYHARD stats, we’ll never know where they stand in the rankings of ultimate #TRYHARDs.

Big-brain, 11.99 GPA logic.

Dad Brog (#170): year five of forever, the sequel

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today, my younger child turns five years old, and as is often the case, I wonder just where in the world has the time gone.  I can still remember the time before children where the biggest stresses and anxieties were planning a wedding after dealing with the increased responsibilities at work after a promotion after moving into a new house.

As cliched as it sounds, the last few years of parenthood have been a blur, probably amplified by the fact that I had two kids in short succession, and as much as it sounds like everything all one melded memory, I do remember most all of the individual details of everything that has transpired.

It’s funny because by default I usually just refer to my kids as a year apart, but there’s always this odd six month gap in between when my oldest has her birthday and the youngest is numerically two years apart, that always feels like an eternity where I have to mentally do the math that such is the case, and then #2’s birthday hits and it’s all like where has the time goneeee?

In any case, my youngest is now five, and back to being a year apart from her sister.  My beautiful, precious younger child, whom mythical wife likes to refer to being, the spicy child, her clone, her mini-me, in the sense that she tends to have adopted more of her personality traits contrary to my own, and quite the opposite of her sister whom many say is more like me, personality-wise.

Yes and no, because #2 does fiercely enjoy her independence, which isn’t to say that her mother, mythical wife does not, but there are aspects of her behavior when I see her meandering off on her own that I can see that reminds me of, myself.  As a second child myself, whether she or anyone wants to admit to it, there are always going to be some things that I really can relate to, that those who are not, won’t.

Like for example, mythical wife often accuses me of being harder on #2 than I am on #1, and I don’t entirely disagree, but it’s mostly because she’s more defiant and independent which often comes off as being obtuse and uncompliant to reasonable asks, and I apparently do not deal well with when my kids aren’t listening to me, especially when I’m asking for simple things.

Therein lies one of the constant struggles of parenting multiple kids, is constantly reminding one’s self that no two kids are ever going to be alike, and to be capable of being fluid enough to switch gears depending on the configuration of present children.

In spite of the very-white, all-rook-same-ing statement I occasionally get, asking if my kids are twins, in my eyes, my girls couldn’t possibly be any more different from one another.  They look nothing alike to me, especially since one has really curly hair while the other does not, and their personalities are also very different.

But regardless if my youngest occasionally gives me a harder time than my older child, I don’t love her any less than with every fiber of my being.  It’s the fact that she’s more like her mother in some personality facets that makes her perfect, and much like her mom, she might drive me crazy at times, but when the day is over and things settle down and get quiet, all I feel for her is love and the want for nothing but to be the best dad I can for her, even if I am wildly imperfect.

So from one second child to another, my spicy daughter, the wish for her to have the happiest of birthdays, and the want for her to know that she is loved, treasured, and most definitely cared for, and as long as I draw breath, I want little else other than for her to be happy and live a good life.

I love you, forever.