Saturday, January 22, 2005

Two more wins for the kiddies

Basketball Saturday II for the youngin's went well, indeed.

Well, for their teams, anyway.

My daughter's team played "on the road," which on the sixth grade level means about a half-hour drive that, in today's instance, took forty-five minutes because of an inexplicable traffic jam near my house. Combine that with my wife impulsivley deciding to drag her on a two and a half hour, sixty-mile round-trip expedition to get her school pictures re-taken because she happened to have her eyes closed when the first ones were snapped (which I didn't think spoiled them at all, but then what do I know, I'm just her dad...), which deposited them back home fifteen minutes after we were supposed to leave for her game, and the end result was that we didn't arrive until the first quarter was almost over.

I did well to avoid having a stroke. It's been a long time since I've had to battle traffic like that, even though I did it for seven years. Believe me, I don't miss it.

My sweetie played the second and third quarters and a smidgen of the fourth. Though her team blew out their overmatched hosts 30-11, she didn't have as good a game as last week largely due to her feeling lethargic all day. She says she's just tired; I'm hoping that she didn't bring home another flu bug to get all that nastiness started again.

My son's game started an hour after my daughter's, so wifey took him to his, which was a "home" game. We got there mid-way through the third quarter of an even bigger blowout victory, a final score of 37-13. Unfortunately sonny-boy didn't have nearly as good a game as last week, and he wasn't happy about it afterwards (e.g. he kicked his water bottle over the bleachers and stomped out to sulk behind a garbage can). I tried to cheer him up by reminding him that his team won the game, but he was inconsolable.

No, I will not deny that he is my son. He's also ten years old, which raises the question of what Seattle Seahawk running back Sean Alexander's excuse was for a similar tantrum a few weeks ago. Also why I bothered saying anything to him when I know for a fact that his tantrums have to run their course, and nothing short of a tranquilizer dart can slow them down.

At least we know that he cares. Now the trick is to get him to care about more than his own performance.

Maybe I should tell him to look on the bright side - perhaps next week he'll score twenty points and his team will get massacred.

I hope I don't find out his reaction to that....