procrastination

This is the really great thing about beginning this blog -- I have discovered a new (for me) procrastination device.

In the past, when I had essays to grade, as I have now, I could turn to deadheading, then fertilizing, then snailbating, before grading. By the time I had responded to every garden need, it would likely be time to pick up the kids from school. Procrastination mission accomplished.

But now that my kids can drive their own selves home from school, it turns out I need a new device. I can only garden so long without looking like a fool.

Ergo, I am here, typing this, rather than grading.

Why put off the reading and responding to 45 essays? Because I cannot just grade them, or even correct them, both of which are easy enough. I have to RESPOND to them. Some days I feel about this the same way a shy person feels at a party. I just don't want to try to interact in that way.

I know it is important to hear and to respond to what my students have to say, before I can respond to how they say it. But it is just so much harder to deal with their content. Sometimes, they have precious little to say and it is hard to be positive about their thinking.

And that is why I drag my feet. That is why I've typed these words. (After having handwatered the beds rather than turning on the soaker hose.)

Enough of that. Back to the essays.

I hate sports

As a chubby reader growing up, I never took part in sports, mainly because they did not come naturally to me. Some kids are designed by nature to fidget and wiggle and wail unless they can be climbing or running or hitting. It seems to me those kids are far more likely to grow into athletes than kids like I was.

I had a long attention span. I could sit and daydream and read and listen to music or imagine things quietly for hours alone. I was not unhappy. And I had no trouble relating to other kids when they happened by. But I certainly was not driven to play. It seemed odd to me that others were. It also seemed odd to me how “into” sports other people, especially adults, could be.

Then I grew up and became a mother of boys. Now of course I know that girls play sports at the highest levels and with the greatest intensity. But I don’t think they HAVE to play sports. They can focus on being artistic, or social, or intellectual or business-like or pretty instead if they like, and find friends and be happy in those ways.

But I am pretty close to thinking that boys HAVE to play sports. Not only that. They also have to be notably good in at least one of those sports in order to possess the invisible union card that will allow them into boy friendship circles.

Any good parent wants her children to have friends, so in spite of my own lack of sports-savvy, I made sure my sons were registered in all the relevant seasonal leagues. There was soccer and swimming and football and basketball and water polo and track and cross country. By watching carefully through these seasons, I figured out (slow learner) that they would have more fun and more friends if they got good at these sports, especially in middle school, when boys are prone to running into trouble.

So my husband (who knew all this without studying it) and I made sure our sons made all the practices and talked about the games before and after and attended additional private training sessions and went off to summer sports camps. We wanted our sons to be good at sports so that they could have friends so that they would be happy and so would we.

In fact, this thinking paid off. Each of our sons did develop a notable level of expertise in at least one sport by middle school – our eldest in swimming and our youngest in basketball. The interesting thing was, that as our sons began to perform well in these areas, we noticed that other adults were paying more respect to us, too. Imagine. My husband and I gained status as our sons moved faster and scored more. And I don’t just mean that the Neanderthal types thought we were cool. I mean that some of the most intelligent, successful adults we knew thought more highly of our family when our sons swam fast and made baskets. I felt this was pathetic, but I certainly did enjoy it.

I became a rabid fan of my children’s sports. Of course I pulled coolers of gatorade and typed rosters and threw potluck awards banquets and waved pom poms. But beyond that, I cared. I mean I really cared how well my sons performed at these STUPID events.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that exercising is stupid, or that teamwork or effort or passion or strategizing or celebrating victory are stupid. I am just admitting that if my sons were doing all these things, caring for their team and trying hard and thinking intelligently and rejoicing at good moments, why did it matter whether they were a hero or not, or even whether their team won or not? But it did matter to me. I definitely preferred the role of sports when my sons won a medal or made the clutch shot.

Now my sons are in high school. I hate sports.

My older son, the swimmer, decided to shift his attention to water polo in high school. Since there are many excellent and talented players at his school, early on he suffered through some painful moments of being edged out of the playing rotation. In his sophomore year his coach seemed to decide our son would not be in his senior year rotation so stopped investing time or interest in him. This made my husband and me sick to our stomachs. How should we advise our son to handle this situation? It seemed to us that he should speak to his coach. Clearly we should not speak to the coach on his behalf. So I did. I was the mom who emailed the coach. That did not work out well. I do not recommend it.

Fortunately, our son found a very satisfactory (for him) way to deal with sports disappointment. He decided he hoped he’d never get in a game. That way he could stay dry on the pine, cracking jokes with the other bench warmers. He really was happy in this new role. In fact, he was relatively famous for wearing his team bathrobe over no swim suit at all. He just wouldn’t put it on. In the rare event the coach called his name, he’d ask him to wait a minute while he deck-changed. My son dealt with his disappointment by deciding not to care, with flair. My husband and I had to shift around and try to not-care too, which was harder than you’d think. This was the boy who’d won every single swim event in the Meet of Champions as an 8^th grader, the boy who’d set five club records. This was the boy who’d made us look very, very good, without our swimming a lap.

We adjusted. Within about a month of his senior season, we were the witty, relaxed parents in the stands, joking, cheering and having fun while the parents of real players worried. It worked.

But our second boy did care about basketball. So when he worked and ran and yes-coached the best he could and made his freshman team, we were so happy for him (and for us – we love to watch him play), until such time as the coach decided he would not grow into the tall kind of kid who might play in his senior year and benched him and four other boys for nine games straight.

When we called the coach (yup, we did it again) to ask if our son had a bad attitude or failed to work hard enough, he answered “Oh no. He is the hardest worker on the team. He has a great attitude. It’s just that I want him to learn that sometimes hard work and a positive attitude aren’t enough.”

This wasn’t the lesson we wanted to teach our 15 year old son. So we told him to quit.

Yes, we encouraged our son to quit. And as a result we endured many hard looks from sports people who disapproved of the lesson we were teaching our son. As you may guess, we typically seek to avoid disapproving hard looks. But we decided to suck it up and tell everybody: sports are not important enough to make a kid and his parents sick. And if hard work and a great attitude aren’t predictors of fulfillment in anything he is doing, then we think he really ought to quit that thing and go where effort and attitude do make a difference.

Of course the real reason I hate sports is because it puts my kids in a position to be hurt, and a part of me wishes they could avoid that (and that I could too). But in a way I am happy that they continue to put themselves out there, trying new things – the swimmer became an actor this year, the basketball player a runner. And though these risks make me nervous on their behalf, I continue to cheer the highs right along with them.