Tonight is game night. I’m excited. I love to watch my 9 year old son play basketball. We perform the same ritual before every game. We get stretched out, do some light calisthenics, practice free throws, jump shots, layups, and talk about defensive strategy. Nahhhh. Just kidding. We don’t do any of that sh*t. We usually go to Subway and grab some food. Horrell’s are much more storied for their eating than athletics. Amanda will be with us just like every other game, with the rare exception that she cannot coordinate her work schedule around it. Both the kids get excited when they know that Amanda is going to be attending an event. Grayson’s basketball team is 0-7, and they are awesome. Their coach is probably one of the most patient men I have ever seen. He rotates the kids at set intervals and allows each of them to play almost every position, assuming they are capable of dribbling a ball down the court, which most of them are not, Grayson included. Grayson was born with the Horrell athletic gene. This means that he will most likely never break a 5 second forty yard dash, and touching the net on a 10′ hoop would be a lofty goal in terms of a vertical leap. 9th inning strikeouts and grand slams are not predicted, and I do not foresee clearing the dinner table for SEC recruiters to dote over him, but you never can be too sure. I do not come from a long bloodline of athletes. I always enjoyed sports but was never particularly good at them. I was really aggressive (and angry), which can take you pretty far in youth sports. I also really enjoyed playing sports, so I put a lot of time into them. I was able to enjoy as much success in athletics so that I don’t feel the need to try and make my son accomplish something that I could not, and I was just sh*tty enough to have seen the reality of my situation, and also his. The other parents on the team seem to be pretty chill and all want their kids to just have a good time, and we have not faced any opponents with the overzealous, stereotypical doucherdads, who think that their son is going to be the next Air Jordan.
I was always supported at my athletic events by friends and family. Hell, I have been supported at whatever it was that I was trying to accomplish. I had people who enjoyed watching me play, or at least claimed to, like good friends and family are supposed to do. I don’t know that the idea behind youth sports is to produce good athletes so much as it is to produce confident, well rounded individuals who are willing to set goals and accomplish them, but I don’t know. I’m not really sure that there has to be a reason. One good reason is that it passes time and gives us something to watch. I have no idea why a grown man wearing black and white stripes and tight pants would run up and down a court blowing whistles at 9 year olds, or why a scorekeeper would sit behind a score clock for hours at a time, while only periodically adjusting the score, and I certainly don’t know why someone would perform the thankless job of organizing the league and all of its games and schedules, with only the promise of over-medicated moms breathing down your back about what you could have done better to work around her life schedule. The fact remains, people do it, and I feel really fortunate that someone is willing to invest the time. Undoubtedly, there will be individuals who find whatever reason in the world to bitch and complain about what could be done different, but I guess that is cool too. I don’t know if every kid should get a trophy, and really don’t give a sh*t. You hear the cries of “that is what is wrong with society today, every kid thinks they deserve a trophy and is not willing to work for it.” I’m not exactly sure if that’s a real problem or not, but I don’t really see the trophy system as being something that is fundamentally wrong in our country. I didn’t “DO” or “NOT DO” things because I expected or didn’t expect a trophy. I did things because I wanted to, and usually if I didn’t want to, it was because I’m fu*king lazy, or uninterested…while my lack of interest generally stemmed from my laziness, so same difference. I don’t see the need for there to be tied so tight a correlation between cause and effect that we believe we can identify what practice is causing said problem with an entire generation of our society. Another interesting point about what is “wrong with our society” is that kids don’t play outside. Here again, I have not the answer, and truthfully don’t really see the problem. I played outside a lot as a kid, and that was cool. I also played a lot of Nintendo, and that was cool too. I played a lot of sports, and most of them were cool. Basically, people complain about the kids of younger generations, but I’m not sure that previous generations had the answers either. It seems like that the bitching is a virtual unhappiness funnel pouring downhill from oldest down to the youngest
I have really hit a wall. I have know idea where I was going with this, which is really my favorite part about writing. The expectation of someone like me holding a single thought for 1,500 words is ridiculous. ANYWAY, I think my point was that people are always bitching, even about the purest things in our lives, people find a way to complain. I went to mail a package at the Post Office a while ago (this afternoon), and WHOAHH…people were upset. I didn’t know that “going postal” was like a thing, but apparently it is. People were raging from the front of the line to the back. It was interesting to see how the frustration at the front of the line spread like a cancer to the back. It was as if the people who just walked in the door were being sold on a pyramid scheme of pissed offed-ness. The customers in front were making aware the newer customers behind them that there was a NEED to be pissed, and if you are gonna be in this line, you better start getting pissed. It was pretty funny. I have heard that referred to as “recruiting resentments”. You know, when you have a problem, so you go campaigning to your buddy, in hopes that they will be pissed right there with you? That is what was happening here. So what did I do? Well, I bravely stood there and starred down at my iphone like a fu*king idiot. I starred at the technology that is one of the things that is “wrong with our society today”. Well, I’m not the most observant person in the world and I’m certainly not the most intelligent, but the only real problem that I see with society today is the people complaining about it. I’m gonna go pick up my perfect children, scoop up my hot wife, go to the basketball game and enjoy all the perfect personalities, that each have their own reasons for doing what they do, and sit my fatass up in the bleachers and enjoy everything that is right with the world….which at this very moment, is every bit of it. I hope you all enjoy your day.