Basketball and Other Skills

"Daddy, will you get me a drink?"

"Sure. But I need some snuggles first."

"No. I just want a drink."  said Kiddo #1, acting so much like her Mommy.  Husband, being the man he is, takes it upon himself to bestow the lesson entitled "The Art of Negotiation" upon Kiddo #1.  Husband, having just finished watching "The Negotiator" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120768/)  figures himself a little bit Kevin Spacey's character Chris Sabian.  He looks at Kiddo #1 and says, "Look. Kiddo #1, you want a drink. I want some snuggles. If you give me some snuggles, I'll get you a drink. See how that works? We both want something, and by giving me what I want, you get what you want.  It's called Making A Deal."

Kiddo #1 thinks it over for a minute.  She sits down, taps her chin like a Kung Fu Master, squints her eyes ever so little and says, "I know! I have a deal for you Dad.  Why don't you go get me a drink, and then YOU get your OWN snuggles."

She starts Junior Kindergarten this year. She's so incredibly excited to go to school, "like Emily and Ethan," the neighbour kids. It's been chilly here for the last few nights, but the sunsets have been extraordinary-- all pinks and purples.  So, on our way home from Daddy's soccer game tonight, we looked up in the sky marveling about the colours and clouds. Then she said, "Momma, I think the sky is this pretty because I'm going to start school and everyone is very happy about it, even the sky."  I said I thought so, too and then remembered that we don't have any dog food left for tonight's supper (for the dog) so I turned the car in the direction of the store.

When we pulled up I heard, "P-p-p-p, eh-eh-eh,t-t-t-t,sssss,mmmm,ahhh,r-r-r,t-t-t.  pppeett sssmrrt. ppetsmaaart. Pet Smart. Is this Pet Smart, Momma?"  And all I could think is: "Damnit! Now Husband and I can't say, "Hey, let's have s-e-x tonight" anymore!"  

I speak French, too, and have been speaking French to her since she was 6 months old. It came about because some friends of ours were pregnant, too, and the father, a basketball fanatic, was so excited to meet his baby so he could teach him or her basketball. And I thought, "Wow! That's cool! That's so cool that he wants to teach his baby how to do the thing he loves doing and the two of them can play together and maybe the baby will end up in the NBA or WNBA (they didn't know what they were having at the time) and it'll be because his/her Dad instilled both a love of and skills for basketball from day one."

By the time I got home from the dinner visit I was both very excited for the wee bambino on the way for my friends, and anxiously reviewing the skill set that I might impart on my child.  I don't play basketball, I've never played soccer. I can figure skate, but the town in which we lived didn't have an arena (which is unheard of in Canada, but more of a norm in the States where we lived at the time), so that was scratched. I'm no great cook or ... yeah, this might go on all night. Let's just end this and announce my skill set included one thing: French.  So I said, "Ok. French it is."  

That's how Kiddo #1 ended up in a French First Language program here, although you don't have to speak French (as parents) to want your child in that program.  I'm speaking French to Kiddo #2, too, mostly because I wasn't savvy enough to pick up Basketball in the last four years. That game is just so hard to figure out-- running and bouncing a ball, but not too many times or that infernal whistle blows. Plus, I have a real disadvantage, I found out, with my hand size.  

This is my real hand, inside the real hand of local basketball hopeful, L'Arnold Biloxi.  You might notice the gigantic basketball that appears to be softball-sized in the giant hand. And you might notice my wee, child-like hand making those other two things appear to be the size of small cars or planets.  Yes. You might also wonder what the squiggly lines are to the left and right of my arm in this picture. That high school senior, for a young man with Homer Simpson-coloured skin, has incredibly hairy arms. 

Oh, but it's not like I didn't TRY to learn Basketball. 

In fact, I got this picture after a week long visit with my friend, L'Arnold Biloxi.

(Do parents know from the get-go that their kids will become great basketball stars or do kids change their names to something more flashy once they show aptitude for the tall-person's sport? Seems like a chicken and egg issue to me.)

I called him, mostly because, well, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan were both busy. And expensive. But L'Arnold is still a teenager, so I just pretended to be a scout from UCLA (I googled "good basketball university in USA") and I brought my camcorder and said, "Labia, show me some moves."  

After I woke up and put some raw meat on my swollen black eye (if things don't work out in Basketball, he could really get somewhere with boxing), I said, "What? No one's ever called you that? La-Bi? It's like Brangelina or J-Lo, only you're one person and not crazy.  And it's not like it takes a rocket scientist to take La-Bi to the next step."   

Since I was potentially his ticket to school, he smiled and fake laughed and I took it because, hey, I needed a crash course in how to play Basketball.  So, he showed me his best moves, I taped them and pretended to erase the tape so he'd have to show me 100 times how to do each move. Free throws, dribbling, that jumpy-dunky-basket thing. Yep. Everything. I got it all, from every angle imaginable. And at night, I'd put the DVD into the player and watch the heck outta that thing. I watched that footage so many times I could even mimic the grunts and other weird sounds he made while playing. 

Then I put the footage into Movie Maker and, over the next 6 months, I spliced footage of me playing basketball, with L'Arnold Biloxi's.  The results were astounding-- I'll can't quite figure out how to put a still from the footage into this blog, but suffice it to say it was pretty incredible.  Anyone I showed the film to would immediately surrender all monies bet on games of Donkey and 21, instead of actually playing me!  

And, since I was winning all this money on the regular, I earned enough to be able to go to one of those big schools in the States. The ones with Ivy on the walls or whatever. So, I sent out my tape to Harvard, Cornell, Brown, Darthmouth, Princeton, UPenn and uh, that other one.  The offers came rolling in and I picked my school of choice-- I'd watched my video enough times by now, that surely my skills would truly be as great as I conveyed. 

When I suited up for my first game, all eyes were on me. When Coach put me in, I said, "Well, I need a drink." (I was suddenly rather thirsty from the excitement of the game and all) and by the time I got back, the match had ended. But we won, so we all went out to the local French bistro for some celebrating. And, since I speak French, I was also able to translate the menu and order delicacies for our entire team. "I play ball as well as I speak French, you know." I murmured to another tall woman on the team. I'm not sure what position she played (I still didn't really know how the game is set up, truth be told), but she was impressed at both my amazing skills. 

And, before the next game, a tragedy occurred: I fell down the stairs at the library. I was checking out "Practical Modern Basketball" by John Wooden (to read how to actually play) when I tripped over some nerd's heavy backpack. It must've weighed at least 50 pounds -- the damn thing was twice the size of the nerd that owned it!  And, just as I began somersaulting down the stairs, I was able to twist around and get a picture of the woman whose bag ended my Basketball career, on my phone. Sucka!

I didn't have to quit the team when I limped in on crutches; everyone knew the devastating truth. The entire team began sobbing. It was quite the sight, but understandable since I WAS the star and all.  I left them with some parting words that I'd lifted from Wooden's biography, "Wooden On Leadership."  Crying and wailing, several teammates vowed to name their children after me ("Just like George Foreman, only my kids will be Elizabeth 1-9. Even the boys!").  I packed up my things and headed home.

But, like I said, I never really learned how to PLAY basketball, so when it came time to have Kiddo #2, I looked over my list of skills and, once again, had French at the top. Le top, actually. (That's French humour for you-- it's subtle and sophisticated, so you might not get it.)

And, I ran into L'Arnold Biloxi at McDonalds the other day!  He took my order, astonished to see me again, and frantically asked me what happened and why hadn't he heard from me, and could he possibly re-try out for UCLA and did I want fries with that?

I said, "Look, Labia, you want to get into UCLA, and I want my kids' meal. This sounds like a negotiation to me."  Labia looked me in the eyes and said, "If you get me a basketball scholarship to UCLA, I will buy you one kids' meal a day for the rest of your life."  Realizing that much fast-food would surely take 30 years off my life, in the first 30 days, I said, "No dice. But I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna pay for this kids' meal and I'll send your tape to some smaller schools in the US."  L'Arnold, with tears of joy in his eyes, even snuck an extra toy into the bag and, like my old teammates, waved a bittersweet, but hopeful goodbye as I left.  

And that, my friends, is the art of negotiation: I needed that second toy for Kiddo #2 and I wasn't gonna pay $3.50 for a frickin' plastic Smurf. When I got home, I found the DVD of L'Arnold Biloxi, dusted it off, wrote "Watch me" on the front and slid it into an envelope marked "Urgent Draft Prospect" and sent it off to none other than Wooden himself. He'd know if Biloxi had potential after a few seconds. When the envelope came back "Return to Sender" I took it as a sign that Biloxi didn't have a chance and burned the whole thing lest it ruin his dreams.  I went back to McDonalds and told him he had to make his own luck, that I'd tried and there was some interest, just nothing that fit for this year.  Biloxi hugged me and said I was an inspiration.  

You know, for all the crying and hugging and "You're an inspiration" stuff, it seems to me that Basketball players are SUPER emotional. Maybe it's a good thing I never learned how to play after all.

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