Basketball Jones
With the great gymnastics experiment over and done with, it’s time for The Boy to move on to yet another sport. Around these parts, the portion of the calendar between Christmas and Spring Break means one thing – basketball.
You haven’t really lived until you’ve experienced a pre-k/kindergarten basketball game. It’s a chaotic mixture of kids running around, knocking each other, scattering when a rebound occurs (so as to avoid getting hit by a ball which weighs nearly as much as they do), ignoring basic rules like dribbling and back court violations, and generally just doing whatever they can get away with.
In the corner, there’s also always a couple of kids just flopping around the court like fish. I’m not sure what that’s all about. Surprisingly, the twelve-year old volunteer referees are pretty much powerless to impose any sort of order upon these pint-sized hard court maniacs.
The Boy’s team is the Lakers, which unfortunately don’t seem to have any of the success that their namesakes have enjoyed. So far they’re 1-3 on the season and a couple of those losses were pretty ugly. But they’re all having fun and that’s what really matters.
The Boy has surprised me so far by really getting into it. I expected him to be timid and generally catatonic like he was when he first started soccer and gymnastics, but he seems to have picked it up pretty quickly.
He hasn’t made a basket yet, but he’s not afraid to shoot the ball, even if his first inclination is always to pass the ball to someone else. What he lacks in offensive production, he more than makes up for with his tenacious defense. My little guy always covers his man very effectively. And he’s even found time to chat up his lady teammates while sitting on the bench.
He seems to be having a good time. And, most importantly, he’s finally got a sticker with his name on it on his mother’s car. For him, that makes all those Saturday morning practices totally worth it.
Fries at the bottom of the bag
- The Girl has been experimenting with some new hairdos recently – one she got in the bathtub last night and another one her teachers gave her at school.
- How cute is this? One of The Boy’s classmates sent him a note asking if he could come over to play. And on the back, he drew a picture of them playing Star Wars like they do every day at recess.
- I understand and accept that weather forecasts will never be perfect. What I don’t understand is why forecasts aren’t updated when they’re proven wrong. To keep forecasting a high that’s lower than the current temperature just makes you look dumb.
- Speaking of worthless weather data, check out the weather for the exact same location according to four different sources (all loaded within 15 seconds of each other).
- Also not updated to reflect a changing reality – UPS’ estimated delivery dates. Although in this instance, I’m not complaining.
- I was perusing the baseball best-sellers list on Amazon the other day and was puzzled by some the “baseball” books listed in top 100 – like this one, this one, these two and these two. I guess I don’t really understand baseball at all.
- This unfortunate typo (I hope it’s a typo) by a local TV reporter shows how a single missing letter can completely change the meaning of a sentence.
i love the playdate note — he’s making friends and working on his penmanship!
I thought the picture was them playing with chainsaws and I was going to be all “DON’T LET YOUR KID GO OVER THERE! DANGER! DANGER!” But I’m down with Star Wars playing.
The picture of him with the little girl is ADORABLE.
Glad The Boy is enjoying the basketball. I’m glad he’s got the black sweatbands on his wrist. I’m sure it’s tough running up and down the 1/2 court all morning!!! The drawing is awesome! I love that one of the kids is Darth Vader!
They actually hand out those sweatbands before each quarter so the kids know that they’re supposed to guard the player on the other team with the same color. Most kids ignore that though and just swarm to kill whoever has the ball.
I totally thought those were chainsaws too.