I registered Son Number Two for lacrosse yesterday. It wasn’t
easy.
I mean, the website and registration process and everything
was fine. That’s not what I meant. It wasn’t easy getting to this point. You
know, because of baseball. Allow me to explain.
You see, lacrosse seems to be a spring sport, which conflicts
with the standard springtime baseball season. Everyone knows baseball is
America’s game, so I wasn’t really sure what Son Number Two even meant when he
said he wanted to play something called lacrosse during baseball season.
He said something about baseball not being fast enough. I
told him it speeds up tremendously when you misread a routine fly ball with
runners in scoring position. He just rolled his eyes. Then he said something about
baseball not having enough action. I told him nothing has more action than an 0-2
curve ball with two outs and the bases empty, but he just looked at me funny.
After many confusing conversations, it finally became clear
that he wished to actually not play baseball in the spring and
play lacrosse instead. I rushed him to the pediatrician, and explained the
situation, but the lady at the front desk was as confused as I was, and kept repeating
some nonsense about how kids wanting to choose a new sport was natural.
I kept repeating the whole no baseball part to her,
but she just wasn’t getting it. Finally, the doctor came out, shined a light in
his eyes, told me his brain was working fine, and made us go home.
We need a new pediatrician.
Exasperated, I told my wife all about what our middle son
was suggesting and what the whackadoos at the doctor’s office said.
That’s when I found out she’s also crazy.
Now, finding a new doctor is one thing, but finding a new
wife and kids seems a bit extreme, so I was forced to begin to wrap my head
around this whole no baseball thing and start to consider lacrosse instead.
Being from the west coast, I had never even heard of
lacrosse until my son brought it up. It turns out quite a few kids already play
it, but they all seem to live on the east coast. Further research showed some east
coast high schools and colleges even offer lacrosse, I assume as an elective.
Reluctantly, I purchased a lacrosse stick for him. If you’re
from the west coast like me, I’ll describe it for you. It’s a four-foot-long
metal stick with a plastic hoop on top, about the size and shape of a parking
meter. The hoop is strung with what appear to be shoelaces, to form a net, and
apparently, it’s really cool to leave a bunch of the shoelaces longer than they
needed to be so they hang down off the back, like Predator’s dreadlocks.
The stick looks like a fantastic device to catch crawdads
with, but when I tried to catch and throw a ball with it, it was totally
useless. You know what’s good for catching a ball? A baseball glove. And for
throwing a ball? Your arm.
Anyway, off we went, useless Predator stick in hand, to the
free clinic put on by the local lacrosse club. Much to my amazement, there were
some high school kids there who could actually throw and catch a ball with
their lacrosse sticks. And they appeared to be from the west coast. They could
even run with the stick straight up, keeping the basket over their heads, and
the ball stayed in the shoelace net, which was also impossible at my house.
Then the coaches picked up sticks and started throwing and
catching. Holy cow! They could throw the ball approximately seven hundred miles
per hour and hit very small targets accurately from many yards away. I was
dumbfounded.
As I sat on the sidelines, mesmerized by how one coach
picked up a ball off the ground by somehow just slapping it with his stick, the
league president started showing us the standard boys’ lacrosse equipment.
Shoulder pads, elbow pads, big protective gloves, and a very
serious-looking helmet.
Wait a second... you mean to tell me this is going to be a
bunch of boys racing around the field banging into one another and hitting each
other with the sticks?
Where do I sign him up?
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen
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