Rekiwi's Blog

My son is now playing T-ball. He loves it, which isn't saying much. Anything that involves a ball rivets him. Golf on TV leaves him transfixed. He's got really good hand/eye coordination, so he's pretty good at whatever he tries. He fears losing and doing anything new. This tempers his enthusiasm and limits his potential, but we don't need him to excel. We're in a pronounced minority of T-ball parents. Most of the mom's are strident overachievers trying to get by on less than four hours a sleep at night. This leads to my wife helping set up for Opening Day at 6:30 Saturday morning in pouring rain for an event that starts at 11. Sure enough, just as my wife predicted, everything was done by 7:45. If they hadn't been so gung ho and started at 9, everyone would've been better rested and dry. It didn't rain again that day. Meanwhile, most of the older kids I've interacted with have been either painfully insecure or maddeningly smug. Maybe they can sense that I'm not a sports fan. The few dads I've run into are more interested in drawing competitive boundaries around the kids rather than any shared experience. I'm glad we signed up our son and I think it'll do him some good, but I'm also starting to understand why my parents didn't bother.