I've been to three Diaryland pages where the link labeled "older" gets me nowhere. I'm wondering if the owners of these pages know this.

And in a similar note, every entry I've composed since July 17th is conspicuously absent from the archive pages. They'd be lost completely were it not for the five most recent entries feature. But they have to be somewhere. Why else would my Diaryland total entries number be increasing?

I truly tried to recompose the entry I carelessly closed in a moment of computer slowness last night, but I can't replicate it. And it was such a wonderful entry, too. I need to take everyone's advice and compose entries in a different window, or cut and paste the entry every few minutes. Hopefully, this won't happen again. And I don't think it will, as I'm generally not this careless as far as entries are concerned.

And just now, I read about this in the Diaryland news section. It isn't just us. It will soon be fixed.

I'm watching the news, and the roving "reporter" Neleh Dennis is (fitingly) at the Provo minor league team baseball field. As she's speaking to the general manager of the team, the camera is focused on a four-year old who is up to bat.

In the background, you can see the father pointing to the fence, a'la Babe Ruth's famous "calling his shot" homerun in the 1932 World Series. You can also see him try to turn his son from his stance in the batters box toward the fence to mimic this action.

This father would not give up. His kid, confused, would not turn his body. He quietly but defiantly faced the pitcher, bat in hand, ready to swing and was completely oblivious as to what his father was doing. After all, he is four, and probably has no knowledge of this Ruth homerun.

So the father is finally able to turn him toward the outfield fence, points his bat again, and you can hear him tell his son to, "point your bat." The kid is still quite confused, still facing the camera, and all he wants to do is bat and get his father out of there.

Finally, the father backs off, apparently giving up, before stepping back toward his son, prying the bat from his tiny hands and forcing his son into this famous baseball pose. He is then nearly jumping up and down and so incredibly proud that after close to a minute, his son is doing this, even though he doesn't have a clue about what he's doing.

His four-year old then proceeds to hit his second homerun of the morning.

This story illustrates the things parents do to please themselves in spite of their kids. This father is probably going to pull that tape out in 15 years to show everyone how cute is was that his son imitated Babe Ruth. It reminds me of that scene in A Christmas Story, where the mother asks Ralphie to go upstairs to try on the bunny costume his aunt had sent him, more for her amusement than anyone else's in the family. We've all seen outfits parents want their kids to wear. The ones that make you think, "what parent would do that to their child?" I just keep wondering how that four-year is going to turn out.

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