My 17-year-old son David innocently asked me if I wanted to go to the basketball court with him Sunday. Since he’s at that cute age where he rarely speaks a sentence to me that doesn’t begin with the words, “Can I have..”, I said sure.
I warned him, though, that I was not going to play him in an actual game. I’m too out of shape for that foolishness. I might hurt myself or, in a much worse outcome, I might actually lose.
He’s been trying to bait me into a basketball game for some time. The other day he was trash-talking and I said, “Have you forgotten who won the last time we played? That’s right, it was me.”
He responded by reminding me that it was three years ago when that happened, when he was still in the eighth grade. Oh, big deal. Like there’s much difference between an eighth-grader and an 11th-grader. I mean, I haven’ t changed that much in three years, so what makes him think he has?
Anyway, we got to the court, and we started shooting, and I realized the little booger knew what he was doing. He knew there was no way I was going to let him stand unchallenged on the court. Finally I said, “Ok, I’ll run you a quick one. Let’s play to seven.”
No, he said, we always play to 12. Fine, I said, knowing I couldn’t back down. If you show weakness to these urchins, they’ll kill you in your sleep and steal your debit card. So I agreed to play to 12, which in retrospect, was a poor decision.
The game started out calmly enough. I drained a couple of jumpers, he made a layup here and there. By the time the score was 3-1, there had already been three timeouts for injury. It may surprise you to know that two of those times, he was the one who got hurt. He kept foolishly running into my elbow.
The other time, I jammed my fingers quite badly when I reached for the ball and accidentally hit his hard head. As evidence, my middle finger on my right hand is swollen to the size of a bratwurst and is turning black. Having a middle finger out of commission severely hampered my morning commute. But I stayed tough, and took a 7-4 lead, and would have at that point been the winner had I stuck to my original plan.
Then, he began to catch up, and I began to move a little more slowly. I was going to my left with all the quickness of a sea turtle on Quaaludes. After he tied the game at 7-7, I looked up and saw my wife drive up in her car. She had come to watch the fun. Trust me, I had no illusions about who she was pulling for.
It’s a good thing she showed up when she did, because it gave us an excuse to stop the game for a few minutes, and I was about 5 seconds away from a cardiac event.
“How are you doing?” she said, and I told her that I was doing just fine, but it might not be a bad idea to dial 9-1-1 on her phone and have her finger hover above the “send” button, just in case. She smiled, told me that she had faith in me, and asked me where the life insurance policies were.
The game resumed and, as you can surmise, what with my concentration thrown off and my finger hurting and the fact that the baskets were 3 inches higher than regulation, not to mention it was really a bad biorhythm day for me and my astrological signs were lined up poorly – well, I lost.
Don’t worry, though, I handled it maturely. I congratulated him, and secretly vowed to work over the next few weeks to get ready for a rematch. I’ve hired Larry Bird as my shooting coach, I’m doing conditioning work with Lance Armstrong, and I’ve begun taking steroids. If all that fails, I’ll remind him of all the times I let him win when he was younger. I’m not above accepting charity.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
I watched the Super Bowl Sunday, because I am a red-blooded American man and it is required behavior, like spitting in the sink or drinking straight from the orange juice carton.
I watched it at home, with my son and my dog. None of us cared that much about the game, since we’d hoped the Falcons would make it, but I guess I pulled for the Packers, and my son was for the Steelers. The dog didn’t state a preference.
My daughter was in Athens, studying, I’m sure, because that’s what college students do all weekend. And my wife was upstairs doing something else because, let’s face it, I was watching football, and that’s no place for a woman.
Don’t get me wrong. I like watching football, and I like women. I just don’t like watching football with women.
I don’t much go got football-watching parties, because these usually involve women who are allegedly watching the game, but are really there just to talk. I know, I know, there are some exceptions out there, women who actually are interested in the game and know what’s going on. But I think that’s probably a pretty low percentage, and why take the chance?
My wife will occasionally come into the room with me as I’m watching football, which is fine, except she tries to talk to me, because women think that you are supposed to communicate with your spouse, which is of course crazy talk.
She’ll try one of two tactics in her attempts to talk to me during football. First, she’ll talk about things having nothing to do with the game, like what needs fixing around the house, or how much money the kids need for something, or a story about somebody she knows who caught her husband with a dental hygienist and wants to leave him except they just spent $10,000 on in-vitro fertilization and she hopes she’s pregnant.
She soon learns that this is getting nowhere, as my only response is a grunt before I scream “Screen pass? Who is going to be fooled by a screen pass on third-and-20????”
Her second method is to try to make comments on the actual, game and this is disastrous, because the comments are not appropriate. It’s usually stuff like, “Why are they wearing that color jersey with those pants?” or “Look how long his hair is!” or “Why is he grabbing himself there?”
“Listen,” I told her the last time she tried this, “I appreciate the effort. But all I really want to hear you say when I’m watching football is, “Do you need another beer, honey?’ “ That led to a rough afternoon. Who knew divorce attorneys worked on Sundays?
My daughter is actually a pretty good football watcher, but that’s because I trained her from birth. But her mother just wasn’t trained right, and it’s too late now. It’s why we’ve had two TVs since the day we were married.
I’ve changed my football-watching behavior during the years as I’ve aged and mellowed and my home insurance premiums have gone up. I closely follow two teams – the Falcons and the Georgia Bulldogs –and I used to get quite animated during games, and perhaps would toss a few things around harmlessly. OK, I’ll be honest – I’ve thrown some fits while watching games that would cause Charlie Sheen to tell me, “Whoa, dude. Calm down.”
Now, when things are going poorly for the Bulldogs – which occurred in several games this year immediately after the coin toss – I just get quiet and watch stone-faced, and remind myself that there are people suffering in the world and war and famine and I shouldn’t get upset just because somebody FUMBLED ON THE 1-YARD LINE! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????
OK, maybe I still need some work, and maybe I’m a little bit sexist (I can hear my wife saying, “a little bit????”), but I’m a work in progress. Football is over for a few months, and now I have a lot of time to hear about what needs fixing and who’s pregnant, and I promise I’ll at least pretend to be listening.
I watched it at home, with my son and my dog. None of us cared that much about the game, since we’d hoped the Falcons would make it, but I guess I pulled for the Packers, and my son was for the Steelers. The dog didn’t state a preference.
My daughter was in Athens, studying, I’m sure, because that’s what college students do all weekend. And my wife was upstairs doing something else because, let’s face it, I was watching football, and that’s no place for a woman.
Don’t get me wrong. I like watching football, and I like women. I just don’t like watching football with women.
I don’t much go got football-watching parties, because these usually involve women who are allegedly watching the game, but are really there just to talk. I know, I know, there are some exceptions out there, women who actually are interested in the game and know what’s going on. But I think that’s probably a pretty low percentage, and why take the chance?
My wife will occasionally come into the room with me as I’m watching football, which is fine, except she tries to talk to me, because women think that you are supposed to communicate with your spouse, which is of course crazy talk.
She’ll try one of two tactics in her attempts to talk to me during football. First, she’ll talk about things having nothing to do with the game, like what needs fixing around the house, or how much money the kids need for something, or a story about somebody she knows who caught her husband with a dental hygienist and wants to leave him except they just spent $10,000 on in-vitro fertilization and she hopes she’s pregnant.
She soon learns that this is getting nowhere, as my only response is a grunt before I scream “Screen pass? Who is going to be fooled by a screen pass on third-and-20????”
Her second method is to try to make comments on the actual, game and this is disastrous, because the comments are not appropriate. It’s usually stuff like, “Why are they wearing that color jersey with those pants?” or “Look how long his hair is!” or “Why is he grabbing himself there?”
“Listen,” I told her the last time she tried this, “I appreciate the effort. But all I really want to hear you say when I’m watching football is, “Do you need another beer, honey?’ “ That led to a rough afternoon. Who knew divorce attorneys worked on Sundays?
My daughter is actually a pretty good football watcher, but that’s because I trained her from birth. But her mother just wasn’t trained right, and it’s too late now. It’s why we’ve had two TVs since the day we were married.
I’ve changed my football-watching behavior during the years as I’ve aged and mellowed and my home insurance premiums have gone up. I closely follow two teams – the Falcons and the Georgia Bulldogs –and I used to get quite animated during games, and perhaps would toss a few things around harmlessly. OK, I’ll be honest – I’ve thrown some fits while watching games that would cause Charlie Sheen to tell me, “Whoa, dude. Calm down.”
Now, when things are going poorly for the Bulldogs – which occurred in several games this year immediately after the coin toss – I just get quiet and watch stone-faced, and remind myself that there are people suffering in the world and war and famine and I shouldn’t get upset just because somebody FUMBLED ON THE 1-YARD LINE! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????
OK, maybe I still need some work, and maybe I’m a little bit sexist (I can hear my wife saying, “a little bit????”), but I’m a work in progress. Football is over for a few months, and now I have a lot of time to hear about what needs fixing and who’s pregnant, and I promise I’ll at least pretend to be listening.
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