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Wednesday, June 16th, 2004 09:59 pm
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I've discovered that baseball can suddenly take on life and death importance when one's son is able to actually hit the ball.
Like I've said many times, sometimes I'm not too hot at the 'show interest in child's interest' thing, and baseball is simply one of the hardest to get around. I love my son, but a natural athlete he is not, and I'll be honest, I did sports in high school, but that was from a lack of anything else to *do*. He gets bored at lightning speed when there's nothing to do, and lets' face it, baseball is a lot of upright tanning with an occasional ball making an appearance. At least with kids. Child usually entertains himself cloud watching, making dust-castles, and tossing his hat in the air to see how far it will go. I don't blame him. Right field is *boring*. Left field is where the money is. Or the balls go, anyway, on the off-chance that one actually gets *hit*.
Anyway, one of the more interesting side-effects of me having no clue what on earth his teacher was doing to him in K has ended Child with a preference for writing with his right hand, a willingness to color or draw with either hand, and a complete inability to hit or throw from the right, only left. When I say inability, the first time I saw him try, I thought he was having some kind of muscle spasms. Pretty creepy stuff. My son's coach was the first to reallly *realize* what the problem was, switched his side, and got down to the business of giving him a left model for hitting and throwing.
It's not as easy as you think--or at least, as I would have thought, though I assume that lefties know this already. Kids model on their peers or those around them for everything. No one else on the team is a leftie. No one in the family is a leftie, either. And Brother in Law tried to help, but it's like Child trying to hit from the right. It looks not a little worrying. But bless him, he worked at it, and so did Child, and he's making progress, though it comes in weird forms.
Anyway, I'm a relatively calm sort of stadium parent. I bought nachos for my niece and stepniece, sat all of us down with my mother, and proceeded to look really encouraging and yell pithy phrases when appropriate. I have always had a sort of general feeling of superiority to those parents who engage in traumatizing fits and screams of approbation for their children and hate for the referees who call the little darlings down.
Color me surpised at my reaction to seeing my son, who, let me repeat, has never, as far as I know, been able to hit a ball with any accuracy, knock one out. Well, I exaggerate. It got about ten feet, and even he looked bemused by the situation, like he had no idea how it was that the bat managed such a feat.
Enter Jenn.
"RUN! [CHILD]! MOVE IT! FIRST BASE! GO DO IT GO GO GO GO!" And so on. He's not exactly the Flash when it comes to speed, prefering to take life at a more sedentary pace, so I had a lot of improv time.
This was when I realized was standing, dripping nacho cheese, and my family looking at me with shock. Hey, I was a cheerleader, people. I was drama girl in high school and a little of college. I can project my voice any damn place it needs to go, and at great volume, too. They're just lucky I didn't start yelling cheers out, because trust me, it's not like my mind wasn't running through them all.
So. My throat hurts. But there's more.
Farther up, Child manages to get to third base. By this time, I'm just yelling in general, for no reason I can remember except it felt good. And well, Child. Finally, a hit came, and Child runs for the plate, and God may know what I was screaming, but i do not. He comes to a mostly-stop--think a rolling yield--about two feet away, drops down on one leg, and modifies his way into a pretty credible slide around the base, C shaped, without ever actually touching it. Eventually, one flailing foot hit dead on. Safe. Another child slides soon after, and they both regard each other with satisfaction.
I didn't once think about the nightmare of spray and wash, to my credit.
Anyway, that was my day, after interviewing and certifying two clients for foodstamps. Life is sweet. And baseball rocks.
Recs
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bigboobedcanuck, my biggest LJ crush in the universe, posted Acquiesce, a beautiful post-4.9 right-after-the-end scene, a really *good* look at Justin and his head in the moments after the show ended. This girl could keep my rec page growing all by herself at this rate.
*loves her*
Like I've said many times, sometimes I'm not too hot at the 'show interest in child's interest' thing, and baseball is simply one of the hardest to get around. I love my son, but a natural athlete he is not, and I'll be honest, I did sports in high school, but that was from a lack of anything else to *do*. He gets bored at lightning speed when there's nothing to do, and lets' face it, baseball is a lot of upright tanning with an occasional ball making an appearance. At least with kids. Child usually entertains himself cloud watching, making dust-castles, and tossing his hat in the air to see how far it will go. I don't blame him. Right field is *boring*. Left field is where the money is. Or the balls go, anyway, on the off-chance that one actually gets *hit*.
Anyway, one of the more interesting side-effects of me having no clue what on earth his teacher was doing to him in K has ended Child with a preference for writing with his right hand, a willingness to color or draw with either hand, and a complete inability to hit or throw from the right, only left. When I say inability, the first time I saw him try, I thought he was having some kind of muscle spasms. Pretty creepy stuff. My son's coach was the first to reallly *realize* what the problem was, switched his side, and got down to the business of giving him a left model for hitting and throwing.
It's not as easy as you think--or at least, as I would have thought, though I assume that lefties know this already. Kids model on their peers or those around them for everything. No one else on the team is a leftie. No one in the family is a leftie, either. And Brother in Law tried to help, but it's like Child trying to hit from the right. It looks not a little worrying. But bless him, he worked at it, and so did Child, and he's making progress, though it comes in weird forms.
Anyway, I'm a relatively calm sort of stadium parent. I bought nachos for my niece and stepniece, sat all of us down with my mother, and proceeded to look really encouraging and yell pithy phrases when appropriate. I have always had a sort of general feeling of superiority to those parents who engage in traumatizing fits and screams of approbation for their children and hate for the referees who call the little darlings down.
Color me surpised at my reaction to seeing my son, who, let me repeat, has never, as far as I know, been able to hit a ball with any accuracy, knock one out. Well, I exaggerate. It got about ten feet, and even he looked bemused by the situation, like he had no idea how it was that the bat managed such a feat.
Enter Jenn.
"RUN! [CHILD]! MOVE IT! FIRST BASE! GO DO IT GO GO GO GO!" And so on. He's not exactly the Flash when it comes to speed, prefering to take life at a more sedentary pace, so I had a lot of improv time.
This was when I realized was standing, dripping nacho cheese, and my family looking at me with shock. Hey, I was a cheerleader, people. I was drama girl in high school and a little of college. I can project my voice any damn place it needs to go, and at great volume, too. They're just lucky I didn't start yelling cheers out, because trust me, it's not like my mind wasn't running through them all.
So. My throat hurts. But there's more.
Farther up, Child manages to get to third base. By this time, I'm just yelling in general, for no reason I can remember except it felt good. And well, Child. Finally, a hit came, and Child runs for the plate, and God may know what I was screaming, but i do not. He comes to a mostly-stop--think a rolling yield--about two feet away, drops down on one leg, and modifies his way into a pretty credible slide around the base, C shaped, without ever actually touching it. Eventually, one flailing foot hit dead on. Safe. Another child slides soon after, and they both regard each other with satisfaction.
I didn't once think about the nightmare of spray and wash, to my credit.
Anyway, that was my day, after interviewing and certifying two clients for foodstamps. Life is sweet. And baseball rocks.
Recs
bigboobedcanuck, my biggest LJ crush in the universe, posted Acquiesce, a beautiful post-4.9 right-after-the-end scene, a really *good* look at Justin and his head in the moments after the show ended. This girl could keep my rec page growing all by herself at this rate.*loves her*
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From:I can't even imagine how hard that had to be.
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From:Hee! Congrats to Child for the new baseball skillz. :)
my biggest LJ crush in the universe
The feeling is entirely mutual. See, I already knew that you were a cheerleader! *g*
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From:Awwww, shucks.
(where *did* that phrase come from, with the shucks bit? I've been curious about that for a while)
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From:*G*
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From:...
*a LOT*
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From:Then they get older.
*giggles* It don't get any better later, either. *smacks head* The laundry, that is.
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From:I am so laughing at you right now.
I can hear the screams and see the dripping cheese.
Oh yes.
:-D
Mommy-ness is a wonderful thing - yes?
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