Today is the 7th birthday of my youngest girl, Adelaide Amelia Clementine. For her birthday she asked for a skateboard, a Texas Longhorns T-shirt, new tennis shoes, and a basketball hoop that is more her size. Can you say tomboy? (Sweet shot, Ada!)
Finn, on the other hand, did not want to try out the skateboard or even attempt a basket. This is what he did instead.
Not sure what to make of all this. Maybe that my kids do have one thing in common: they’re all strange.
Finn is in baseball right now. Because we live in a warm place, little league is not just a summer thing. Nope. You can play in Spring and Fall too, if you are that dedicated crazy.
If football is something your boy likes, he has a choice of flag or tackle; both are completely acceptable in the elementary school years. And, lucky you, your son can play year round in Texas. There are leagues for each season. Plus camps. Because football is extremely important here. Not just popular–important. Even in pee-wee football there is tailgating before the game.
And what goes with football? Cheerleading, of course! Girls are cheerleading here as soon as they can walk. No girls have short hair in Texas because, my gosh, you have to be able to put it in a ponytail and wear multiple ribbons in your team’s colors.
Finn’s coach has one child. Yep, he and his wife have decided to put all their eggs in one basket. So we are treated not only to games, but practices and scrimages too. The wife also send out the team’s stats after each game (laughable. The typical batting average? Zero.) Because baseball is serious for nine-year-olds. None of this cheering for everybody who tries. Now you have to earn cheering. And if you happen to strike out (which happens all the time because they are nine, not in high school) the parents offer such gentle, encouraging nuggets as “shake it off” or “we’ll be hitting the batting cages extra hard this week!”. If you try to be empathetic and let your child know that you understand and validate his disappointment by yelling something like, “Bummer!” or “I’m so sorry!” or “you’re great at hitting! You’ll do better next time!”, parents will turn and look at you like you’re the biggest idiot ever. Because the official motto of sports is “it’s just a game”, but the real message is “we are spending lots of time and energy on you. This is the most important thing you’ve done in your life so far. You’re making us look bad.”
What is going on? It seems like every other person I know is training for a triathlon. Why triathlons? Why all of a sudden? Three years ago nobody was doing triathlons, and now I’m the only one who isn’t training.
Seriously, what is the allure? I don’t like running, but at least running kind of makes sense. Bike-riding seems extremely dangerous. All those cars just inches away; drivers busy messing with their ipods and cell phones. A recipe for disaster! Plus it makes my bum sore. And swimming? I can barely swim. I took many swimming lessons and I just didn’t get it. I could never manage to breathe properly without inhaling a lot of water. And talk about boring! Back and forth, back and forth. Nothing to look at. No scenery to take in. Can you even listen to an ipod in the water? At least on a treadmill you can watch old episodes of The West Wing.
Frankly I don’t get it. And I don’t really want to get it. Kind of like being a vegetarian. I’m sure it’s like a higher law or something and I’m just admitting what a slave to self I am, but that’s what I think. I am a slave to my body, and my body is telling me that it does not like triathlons one single bit. So there.
Can you believe I haven’t blogged about the Olympics yet? What’s the matter with me? The matter is that we don’t have TV. Remember me pointing that out a few weeks ago, smugly and condescendingly? Well, I started feeling really awful that it’s the Olympics and my kids are finally old enough to care and we’re depriving them of this multicultural, yet patriotic, event. So I put Mister up to the task of getting the Olympics on at least one TV. He happens to be quite brilliant at all things electronic and TVish, and he managed to get us NBC and a few of the sister channels.
Mister and the kiddles have been avidly watching Michael Phelps who bores me for some reason. I’m really glad he’s a fast swimmer and all that, but I just don’t find his story very rousing. He eats 12,000 calories a day and that does inspire me. Because I would love to eat 12,000 calories a day. That, to me, would be motivation enough to become a great athlete.
I prefer all the oddball sports. I’ve always enjoyed fencing and York and India had fencing lessons for several months last year. They both loved it and York never once lost a match. Mister pooh-poohs it all and keeps being a complete drip about how important it is for the kids to play “socially acceptable” sports. Because if you win a gold medal, but it’s not televised, then you’re still a loser. Wacky thinking, no?
I love rhythmic gymnastics (tumbling with ribbons and balls? Sounds like something my seven-year-old daughter would invent) and synchrnonized swimming; Archery and sailing. And what’s this trampoline business? It was supposed to be on TV tonight but it got preempted due to Nastia Lukin sulking about only getting a silver medal. Competive trampoline jumping sounds fantastic.
NBC announced they would be showing coverage of all the unknown sports via internet. But due to the fact that NBC sold its soul to the Devil (you might know the Devil by his other name, Bill Gates), I cannot watch the Olympics on my Mac. I have oodles of RAM and a screaming hot connection, but poor me, my computer is three years old. No Intel processor so I’m out of luck. Mister occasionally connects his brand new Intel Mac to the TV and we can watch crusty old broadcasts of equestrian steeplechases, but it’s just not the same. There is no commentary (I never thought I would miss that silly drivel by Bob Costas, but I do), no fancy graphics. Just a bunch of people doing odd stuff and I’m left to sort it all out.
We tuned into the air gun event a few days ago. What a complete mystery! First of all, what is an air gun? I didn’t see piles of colored balls everywhere so I’m guessing they’re not the same thing as the airsoft guns that are so beloved by the teenage misfits in my neighborhood. The airgun “athletes” were wearing things like jeans and t-shirts. Not even patriotic “Team USA” t-shirts. Just clothes like they were going to run down to the 7-11 after they were done. As for the rules and competition, I could make no sense of anything. I was so uninspired by it all that I am not even interested in Googling it.
I happen to be a big fan of China and many things Chinese. (I even met Mister at the Chinese restaurant where I worked in college.) I tried to rent The Last Emperor to show my kids (don’t worry, not the entire three hours. Just a few bits and pieces.), but strangely enough no video store carries it. (Mister tried to tell me as I left the house on my quest for the DVD that I wouldn’t be able to find it. I wanted to prove that he was dead wrong. I mean it won the academy award for Best Picture in 1987! Mister got the last laugh and an “I told you so”.) So we settled for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I just love that movie. For the kids’ sake we watched the dubbed version which was not bad at all.
I don’t know that my kids are going to be Olympic crazy like I was back in ’84. By the time I was 13 I pretty much had dedicated my life to TV. But at least I’ve given them the opportunity. I’m pretty sure I’m not raising any future Olympians. So this looks like it’s as close as they’ll get.
