Sean is known more for his hopes than his predictions. More for his desires than his prejudices, too, so your mom and dad forgive him. Nothing excites Sean more than the idea -- the possibility, no matter how infinitesimal -- that you'll be sheer enigma to your mom and dad. That you'll shun books and laugh at clap tracks. Throw touchdowns instead of game pads. Breeze through mathematics and botch languages. To Sean, humor is the most powerful balancing force in the universe. When your mom and dad visit him, they try to ignore the Desert Eagle weighing down the stack of Dark Horse comic books on his coffee table.
When Sean voices these hopes, however ("Your kid's gonna love sports"), he's simply imparting the number-one piece of advice he can impart on any individual. And that advice is: be prepared. Whether it's for being recalled to active military duty, stocking up for the inevitable zombie apocalypse ("Your kid's gonna love zombies"), or becoming a dad. Be prepared.
So your dad is preparing. He's stopping a few seconds longer to read the back of the box in the kid's movie rental section. He's looking up individuals committed to performing "tackle-eligible plays." He's imagining a world that doesn't grind on grammarian wheels. Picturing the value inherent to sequences of numbers rather than strings of words. Preparing for a little person that will be exactly like him, and, possibly, nothing like him at all.
