I've decided there is no such thing as summer. There's just baseball. Good thing I love baseball.
If you've read any of my other blog posts, or have children yourself, you are familiar with the "Wham, bam, Thank You Ma'am" speed of life. Today I called ahead to the house to have the babysitter have Grant get his uniform on for his 6pm game. I would be home at 5:10 and the coach likes them at the game 45 minutes early (and I will tell you that it is longer than a 5 minute drive.) (And don't even get me started about the trip to the eye doctors to fix his broken glasses.)
Of course, I get home and Grant is not dressed, but making himself a bowl of ice cream. So I whisk him upstairs and scramble to find all of his gear. Luckily, we had a 3-day weekend, so I was able to cram in some cleaning and a little bit of laundry and his uniform was clean and waiting for us. I also cleaned his...athletic undergarments and its funny-shaped accessory.
We were rushing to get dressed. He was wriggling on his shirt. I was trying to figure out how to put the slightly curved, triangular-shaped protective thingamabob in his shorts. Which end goes up? (They really should put arrows on those things.) How the heck does this thing work?
And Grant says to me, "What Mom, you didn't wear a nut cup when you played softball?" (The one whole season I played.)
"Nope," I explained. "Girls don't wear nut cups."
The look on his face was priceless. "You mean they make them suffer?" he said. Shock, mixed with sadness for the fairer sex.
Yes, honey. For the rest of our lives.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Rock Star
The crack of the bat. The ball hitting the glove. The crunch of the seeds. It is baseball season once again in the Capital City.
We've actually spent a majority of our lives sitting on the sidelines of my oldest son's athletic pursuits. Spencer and Mia are usually the tag-alongs while we watch Grant hit, slide, shoot and score in a whatever sport he could get his hands on. I convinced Spencer, my middle one, to try baseball one last time before giving it up forever. (Sniffle.) And he had practice tonight.
So Spencer went off with his team, trying to get all excited about a sport that doesn't involve a wii remote. Grant and Mia ran over to the playground to play with the other tag-along siblings. Which by the way, were all 3-5 year old little girls. About eight of them. Grant, my almost 10-year old, and eight 3-5 year old little girls.
The sound of pleasure, mixed with terror, at a decibel and pitch unknown to any musical scale, that is what we would hear as he flopped his lanky not-quite-teenage body on the end of the teeter totter, sending the pigtailed little sissies flying up in the air.
"You're so scary!" "Ahhhhh!!!" "Do it AGAIN!" they would scream as he would chase after them imitating a monster-eating zombie all over the playground. He'd push them higher and higher on the swings, much higher than they could get on their own and so much faster. Now they all had older brothers. But those dorks were their older brothers. This older brother was cool. Exciting. A Rock Star.
Grant was eating it up. To these little girls he was like Elvis, Mick Jagger and Justin Bieber rolled into one. He was so great with these little girls, showing them the right amount of excitement and danger, but looking out for their best interests at the same time. A complete opposite of the way he is at home, where he would just as soon use your arm as a test subject for some strange science experiment involving Windex, Pop Rocks, and peanut butter.
And that's when it hit me, the answer to making the world a better place: We all just need to treat each other like Rock Stars. That's all everyone really wants anyway. It's not the cars or the gadgets or the diamonds and pearls. All people really want is for someone to think that they are kind of cool. Everyone wants to feel important.
So my advice is (if you want to help me try this experiment that doesn't involve household cleaners and small explosive candy), go up to someone today or tomorrow and compliment them. Tell them how important they are to you. Let them know that they are really awesome at something. Let them know that they excite and inspire you. And then, ask for their autograph.
We've actually spent a majority of our lives sitting on the sidelines of my oldest son's athletic pursuits. Spencer and Mia are usually the tag-alongs while we watch Grant hit, slide, shoot and score in a whatever sport he could get his hands on. I convinced Spencer, my middle one, to try baseball one last time before giving it up forever. (Sniffle.) And he had practice tonight.
So Spencer went off with his team, trying to get all excited about a sport that doesn't involve a wii remote. Grant and Mia ran over to the playground to play with the other tag-along siblings. Which by the way, were all 3-5 year old little girls. About eight of them. Grant, my almost 10-year old, and eight 3-5 year old little girls.
The sound of pleasure, mixed with terror, at a decibel and pitch unknown to any musical scale, that is what we would hear as he flopped his lanky not-quite-teenage body on the end of the teeter totter, sending the pigtailed little sissies flying up in the air.
"You're so scary!" "Ahhhhh!!!" "Do it AGAIN!" they would scream as he would chase after them imitating a monster-eating zombie all over the playground. He'd push them higher and higher on the swings, much higher than they could get on their own and so much faster. Now they all had older brothers. But those dorks were their older brothers. This older brother was cool. Exciting. A Rock Star.
Grant was eating it up. To these little girls he was like Elvis, Mick Jagger and Justin Bieber rolled into one. He was so great with these little girls, showing them the right amount of excitement and danger, but looking out for their best interests at the same time. A complete opposite of the way he is at home, where he would just as soon use your arm as a test subject for some strange science experiment involving Windex, Pop Rocks, and peanut butter.
And that's when it hit me, the answer to making the world a better place: We all just need to treat each other like Rock Stars. That's all everyone really wants anyway. It's not the cars or the gadgets or the diamonds and pearls. All people really want is for someone to think that they are kind of cool. Everyone wants to feel important.
So my advice is (if you want to help me try this experiment that doesn't involve household cleaners and small explosive candy), go up to someone today or tomorrow and compliment them. Tell them how important they are to you. Let them know that they are really awesome at something. Let them know that they excite and inspire you. And then, ask for their autograph.
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