You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy! ™
Booking time with my 11 year old to throw the ball.
Like a doctor’s appointment, the boy’s secretary says, “I think your son can play catch with you from 6:05 to 6:20. Is that good for you?
Is that good for you? Shut up!
When I was eleven, and my dad said, “Hey kid, you wanna toss the ball?” I would have jumped up and said where and when. I was a labrador Retriever at the ocean and there weren’t enough people throwing enough sticks into the waves at the same time for me to chase.
Is that good for you? No it is not good for me!
So I come home the other day and my sedentary, shaggy haired kid is sitting at the computer. He’s playing a video game and he is catatonic, like some kind of cyber zombie.
“Let’s throw the ball, boy,” I shout out excitedly.
“I don’t want to,” he laments with a huff and a puff or I’ll blow your house down kind of attitude.
“Come on dude,” I say encouragingly, trying to be the best dad I can be. “Let’s grab the lacrosse sticks and throw the ball for a little bit.” I loosen my tie and head into my bedroom.
“I don’t want to,” he says his eyes barely looking away from the monitor.
“I’ll be out in five minutes and be ready.” He rolls his eyes under his mop of hair and goes back to the computer screen.
I begin to change into some shorts and flip flops, I feel excited to throw the ball.
I start to remember when I was a boy. My dad never had a good arm, but he was fun to throw to. When he threw the ball back to me, he always over emphasized the throwing motion, and stopped as if he was being photographed for Sports Illutrated. Action shot he would say. I do that now with my son, when he’ll play.
Feeling like a million bucks, I come out of the bedroom. It’s a good day to be someone’s dad, I think to myself.
I go to the computer and I feel my heart sink. The kid hasn’t moved. He’s a human lump of indolence. I watch as he demonstrates classic gamer tendencies. A mouse click, a slow head bob. A distant stare as if he’s in a straight jacket in some Stephen King induced insane asylum.
I look at the screen. It’s a silly game that involves a frog and some fire. I watch the frog’s tongue catch a zombie fly in a radiation cloud of who cares.
“Let’s go I say again.”
He rolls his eyes and stomps his feet.
Now I’m getting ticked. I want to throw the ball and my kid only wants to play catch the neutron bomb on the frog’s tongue.
I actually made an effort to come home early. I had my mind set on tossing the ball with my kid. If I had known it was going to go like this, I would have stayed at work thrown my shoes at the bosses door.
“I’m going outside and you better be out there in a few minutes,” I say hiding my dismay.
I grab a Corona and stand on the deck admiring this fine sunset. A brilliant orange ball of sun dripping into the cool blue void of time.
My mind drifts back to my days as a fifth grader. I remember Link Elementary and Mrs. Treat. Mrs. Treat was hot and every 5th grade boy had a crush on her. Curvaceous and aluring. We didn’t know what our 5th grade senses were sensing, but it was over load that’s for sure.
Back in 5th grade, we played ball at the bus stop and we flipped baseball cards. We talked about girls, but we really passed the time till we could play ball again. We didn’t have the internet. We didn’t have the 3-G network. We didn’t have cell phones. The closest thing we had to neutron-tongue frog battle was Pong by Atari. And the reason we liked that was because that little dot was like a ball.
I take a sip of beer and wonder what the hell’s wrong with today’s youth. I mean what’s wrong with my boy? Back in the day, before the internet, before satellite tv and on demand movies, kids were kids. Our driveway was the internet. Chalk passed for an art set. A jump rope doubled as a gymnasium. A ball made it a sports emporium. Today’s youth think the driveway is a place that mom and dad drive their cars. It’s a screwed up place to edge grass.
If you sat in our den back in 5th grade, you knew there was no inernet. All you heard was BAM. BAM. BAM. That was the sound of the basketball smashing off the backboard anchored to the garage.
If we weren’t shooting hoops in the dead of winter, we were shooting hoops in the heat of summer. If it wasn’t baseball, it was curb ball. A ball is a ball is a ball. We would invent an entire game using nothing more than a tennis ball and a curb. We would pretend we were the Yankees versus the Mets banging a ball off the curb.
Internet? Who needs the F-in internet!
We played flag football in the street and tackle football in the neighbor’s back yard. Christ in college we’d drink beers and play tackle football in the street. Some habits die hard.
We played baseball in the street and broke windows by accident. We played baseball in the street, and sometimes tried to pull the ball down third and through Mrs. DiMarsico’s window.
We played catch with a ball of tape. You know why? Because it was round like a ball. We threw rocks shaped like balls at signs and we played roller hockey on the street using a ball. If there was a ball, our afternoon was booked. Mother’s all over Rockland County would stand on their stoop, staring into the street light surrounded by nats and scream for us to come home for dinner. Did we come home? Not if there was air inside a ball that could still bounce.
Now I’m actually staring at my own kid, a 5th grader, who would rather clutch a computer mouse than wrap his hands around a lacrosse stick that can actually throw a ball.
My kid’s got that mopey face and I swear it looks like he’s crying.
“You’re not crying, are you?” I say.
“I’m not crying,” he says angrilly.
“yeah, must be the angle of the sun on your face,” I say.
The same sun that lit up our ball fields as a kid was lighting up a new millennium kid’s face that wanted to go back in the house and climb under the warm blanket of the internet.
I toss him a lacrosse stick and I tell him to move a few yards into the grass. He looks like a WWII soldier after a 30 mile mud march. He is lethargic and disinterested and generally starting to piss me off.
“I’ll tell you what,” I say. “I’ll set my watch to five minutes. After five minutes if you are still bored, we’ll quit.”
A smile comes to his lips. It’s the first sign of enthusiasm I have seen.
Five minutes! If someone said I could only play ball for five more minutes, I would have cried.
I throw him the ball and he actualy catches it.
“That a boy.”
He throws the ball back.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.” Though he’s moody, the kid is a good athlete. He’s faster than I was at this age, and he probably has better hand eye coordination, though the black jack dealers in Vegas might debate that. The kid’s got mad skills I think to myself. Must be all that Call To Duty 4 action on that Playstation.
I throw the ball. It’s a little off target. It hits the side of his net and bounces away.
It might as well have bounced over the Berlin Wall.
He stares at the ball like an eskimo stares at ice. He could give a damn. He gives me a look that says: “you wanna me to go over there and bend over and pick that up? You know how much time and energy that is gonna take?”
He trudges forward, barely moving. It’s like the blades of grass are magnets and his feet are metal.
I look at my watch. It’s been 97 seconds. I have had it.
Go inside and tell your mother you gave up on being a kid. I hope you catch a cold from the air conditioning. I hope you get carpel tunnel from that stupid neutron tongue game.
These are the things I want to say. I don’t open my mouth. He knows I’m disappointed.
I walk up on the deck and watch the sun drift into the hazy orange horizon. I stare at the puffy white clouds and feel the wind blow through my hair. It reminds me of a similar day 35 years ago when the Dimarsico twins rang the doorbell to see if I could play.
Dad can I go out and play?
Of Course.
and that was it. Off into the wild blue sunset of kid-dom!
Today it’s dad, the playstation won’t connect to the internet. Can you fix it?
What’s with kids today?
And that is crazy!