“I’m going to give you a Hanukkah present tomorrow,” Kyle told me on Friday.  “You’re going to want to use it this weekend.”

“What is it,” I said, which was not a question as much as a statement with a healthy amount of skepticism.

“You’ll see,” he said.

The next morning, I opened his present.  It was a pin.

If you have or have had a child in an organized sport, you’ll know that team photo composites are an important part of the overall athletic experience.  What is a team photo composite?  It’s a photograph of your individual child wearing his or her uniform and holding a piece of equipment standing on a playing surface, situated alongside a photograph of his or her entire team also in uniforms and holding equipment on a playing surface.  Always, the name of the team and the year appears on the composite.  Sometimes, the child’s name and jersey number are included.  These photos are especially important now that everyone has a cell phone and professional photographers attend nearly every game so that parents can have a $25 photo of their kid standing motionless alongside their friends in addition to the ninety-billion photos of that same athlete in various states of play/standing on the bench/waiting to get on the ice or field/sitting in restaurants/etc.

These individual composite photos can be purchased in a variety of sizes – wallets, 5x7s, 8x10s, floor-to-ceiling – for the parents, grandparents, neighbors, aunties, and coworkers in your life.  They can also be purchased in a variety of forms, such as magnets, key chains, dog tags…and, of course, pins.

As all of the really good Hockey Moms out there wear pins – I, at one time, dutifully wore pins.  I wore a baseball pin for each of my boys during baseball season, and a hockey pin for each of my boys during hockey season.  However, I stopped wearing pins for three reasons.

The very first reason was that neither of my children gave two craps about me wearing the pins.  They never commented or noticed when I wore them.  When I stopped, they never commented or noticed then, either.  It was similar to the days when I used to cut their food into fun shapes; one day I didn’t cut them into fun shapes and they didn’t say anything and I realized I was doing it only for me.  Both boys have stated that they like the photo fridge magnets – Kyle is a sucker for photo form checkboxes – probably because our refrigerator is much more public than my chest.  So, in lieu of pins, we’ve taken to sticking their photos on the fridge.

The second reason I no longer wear a pin is because my ten-year-old switched from hockey to theater and I didn’t want to wear only one kid’s pin.  It’s funny that such an extensive (and lucrative) photography industry has not yet dribbled out into another activity.  Ten is currently in a play, and I do not have a composite photo of him wearing his costume holding a script alongside a cast photo.  Fourteen attending a sports performance athletic training camp kind of thing this summer, and I don’t have a photo of him holding a weight or a tire or whatever alongside a photo of his exercise group on the turf.  I was in a geology club in elementary school and nary a professional photo exists of me holding a rock, and Kyle was in an astronomy club in college and I don’t have a photo of him pointing at the sky.  Composite photos are a sports-only endeavor, especially when it comes to pins.

“Couldn’t you wear Ten’s baseball pin year-round?”  You may be wondering.  “Or go and buy a pin maker?”

Ten has an impressive amount of confidence, and I can guarantee that if he discovered I was wearing a baseball pin in the off-season or a homemade pin of his theater performance he would request that I get pins of him holding his cello and wearing his Boy Scouts uniform and playing video games and sitting on the couch, because those are also his favorite activities.

Finally, and maybe the most significant reason that I don’t wear pins is this: I like really fluffy coats.  My two favorite coats are a giant green Muppet-esque number and a vintage fur that my sister gave me, neither of which is conducive to displaying one or more pins.

Anyways, let’s go back to Kyle’s pin.  Fourteen’s hockey team recently took their composite photos.  When hockey teams take their team photos, those photos include the coaches.  You can tell which people are the coaches in the photos because they are 1) older than the athletes, 2) wearing jackets and not jerseys, and 3) smiling.  Since my husband was Fourteen’s hockey coach and was already on the ice sheet wearing his hockey coat and smiling, he took that opportunity to have an individual photo taken of himself.

So, that’s what was on the pin: Kyle standing on the ice holding a clipboard.  Since his mother is no longer alive, he gave it to the next-best hockey mom in his life.

Obviously, I wore the pin to the hockey game on Saturday.  I wore it on my sweatshirt because of the whole fluffy coat thing, and I kept my jacket unzipped and specifically pointed the pin out to one of the mothers so that there was evidence I wore it.  After the game, I made him lunch and cut his sandwich into a heart, which I think he also appreciated.

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The photo above is further proof that I wore my pin. I don’t know if you can see it, but it reads “Coach Kyle.”

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This week on North Dakota Today, we talked about Hilda Dickhaut and Family, my Nice People of the Week, as well as a look at the State Historical Society’s collections. (Valley News Live)

The first paragraph of this story says it all: “A Marine veteran who died with no known family was laid to rest Wednesday on December 3, in Fargo, but he wasn’t alone. The community answered a call to make sure Ricky A. Boyd received the honor he deserved for his military service.” (Valley News Live)

Northland Health Centers has created care closets in seven schools across North Dakota. (KFYR TV, found via Oops Only Good News)

One hundred airmen are on their way home for the holidays. (KFYR TV)

In North Dakota-adjacent news, a Moorhead robotics team has build a new hand for first-grader Amarah Ramirez. (Valley News Live)

Also in North Dakota-adjacent news, passersby helped care for nine huskies after their trailer overturned on the interstate. (Valley News Live)

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