A mother’s job is to inflate the self-confidence of her children… but even my mom would admit that I sucked at sports as a child. I somehow managed to brave eight years of soccer in grade school, when I forced my brave parents into a tour of my county’s mediocre fields each weekend.
If I proved adept at stumbling into opposing players in this sport, I elevated it into an art form in basketball, where I had no skills other than chasing the kids with the ball. Then when I achieved my growth spurt, I resorted to standing firmly planted near the basket, where I could most easily hide my ability to dribble the basketball squarely into my feet, thereby kicking it out of bounds and into the hands of the other team.
In high school, I decided to try volleyball in an informal league affiliated with my church. It was there I distinguished myself in at least one feat of academic prowess – managing to hit the ceiling of the auditorium in every game I competed in.
When I was growing up and displeased my mother, she grounded me by thrusting me outside to play with the other children. My home was in my room, where I could play Nintendo for hours – hockey and football games, ironically – for hours on end, accompanied by my friends Junk Food and Air Conditioning. A degree of physical laziness, or at least ineptness, seems hard-wired into my genes, which I fight through only the spottiest of efforts, like climbing the escalator at the Dupont Circle metro every evening on my way home.
For some reason, tennis is the only sport in which I have an honest-to-goodness interest. Until I have the time and cash to pony up for lessons, though, I am content to play spectator at the U.S. Open each year. The special friend and I went up on Sunday to watch the evening session, where I found our last-row-in-the-stadium tickets rewarded by an amazing view of the Manhattan skyline at sunset. The vista was matched my the quality of the men’s tennis, and the whole engrossing spectacle of the tournament.
It's a shame I can't take off work all week to see the thing all the way through to the finals!
If I proved adept at stumbling into opposing players in this sport, I elevated it into an art form in basketball, where I had no skills other than chasing the kids with the ball. Then when I achieved my growth spurt, I resorted to standing firmly planted near the basket, where I could most easily hide my ability to dribble the basketball squarely into my feet, thereby kicking it out of bounds and into the hands of the other team.
In high school, I decided to try volleyball in an informal league affiliated with my church. It was there I distinguished myself in at least one feat of academic prowess – managing to hit the ceiling of the auditorium in every game I competed in.
When I was growing up and displeased my mother, she grounded me by thrusting me outside to play with the other children. My home was in my room, where I could play Nintendo for hours – hockey and football games, ironically – for hours on end, accompanied by my friends Junk Food and Air Conditioning. A degree of physical laziness, or at least ineptness, seems hard-wired into my genes, which I fight through only the spottiest of efforts, like climbing the escalator at the Dupont Circle metro every evening on my way home.
For some reason, tennis is the only sport in which I have an honest-to-goodness interest. Until I have the time and cash to pony up for lessons, though, I am content to play spectator at the U.S. Open each year. The special friend and I went up on Sunday to watch the evening session, where I found our last-row-in-the-stadium tickets rewarded by an amazing view of the Manhattan skyline at sunset. The vista was matched my the quality of the men’s tennis, and the whole engrossing spectacle of the tournament.
It's a shame I can't take off work all week to see the thing all the way through to the finals!
