Live, From The Way Up

"This is Mommy McMommy reporting live from the Way-Up Arena for an exclusive interview with the MVP of today's Little Tikes Tournament game. Tell us how you put together such an impressive win today, son?"

Roughly 30 years ago, I staged news reports for the rented camcorder in my parents' living room. Sometimes, I was the serious news anchor imparting fiery accounts of peril and woe. Other times, I was a hapless morning show host, saddled with unruly guests--like a karate champion who roundhouse-kicked the set to pieces (aka, my sister Liz in a kimono). Three decades later, I regularly find myself "on location" in the finished attic of my adult home, conducting post-game interviews with my preschooler while his brother is at kindergarten.

My two boys are both crazy-competitive and completely consumed with sports. At their age, they're still not totally clear on the rules, so they make them up--from the imaginary "penalties" to the structure of their championship tournaments that happen daily, rather than once or twice a season like the real sports. Pine Straw Soccer is played in our backyard's natural area, having been relocated from the back deck after the force of their kicks became nearly enough to dislocate sections of aluminum siding from the exterior of our home from soccer balls ricocheting off the side of it. Once upon a time, soccer was actually an indoor sport for them, comfortably housed in our scantily-appointed bonus room. But when they nearly punted the ceiling fan out of its socket, the switch to an outdoor venue became decidedly permanent.

It wasn't until last year that our oldest was old enough to participate in rec league athletics and our youngest has since endured 4 seasons of spectating from the sidelines. The first few games of rec soccer were one heartbreak after another for our younger son, whose crushing realization that he would not be wearing cleats and shin guards was immediately compounded by the horror of discovering he would not be allowed to actually play either. I let him wear a pair of my dress socks pulled up to his knees for the first few weeks of practice, so that he could at least feel like he was "dressed out" for the big game--but that was a sad substitute for actual participation. His only consolations were squinting at an IPad screen that was often just barely discernible in the punishing brightness of the noonday soccer sun and enlisting Mommy to chase him up and down on the always-muddy outskirts of the field so he could score make-believe "touchdowns" with the football we brought from home. When all else failed, there were snacks, of course. The completely unnecessary, copious amounts of snacks for our little stress eater, whose level of boredom was always directly proportional to how starving he convinced you he was, regardless of the full meal we'd eaten minutes prior to leaving the house.

Rec soccer for big brother turned into church league basketball and then introductory hockey. For little brother, each sport was just the same exercise in patience, conducted in progressively colder indoor venues with varying degrees of space and constructive things for the average 3-year-old to do. During basketball, our younger son’s soundtrack for each practice/game was a woeful lament that his favorite You Tube video "Learn Colours With Cars" was blocked by the church gym's wi-fi. And during hockey, he railed against the injustice of Mommy bringing zero dollars (and zero intention) to invest in popcorn from the hockey rink's concession stand.

By the time flag football season rolled around, my younger son was in full-fledged revolt-mode, often pitching a fit in the parking lot on the way to the field before big brother's practice, and then subsequently whining about everything when I finally coerced him to our spot on the grass. During games, Peppa Pig's Paintbox on IPad was our savior, along with a patch of dirt at the edge of the fence leading to a construction site. Digging for imaginary dinosaur bones in construction refuse was a decent way to pass the time, but constantly explaining why we couldn't explore the wonderland of rusty nails and jagged building materials just out of reach was kind of like having the sharp point of a pencil jammed weekly into my eye socket.

Fortunately (but unfortunately), the flag football field was also graced with its own series of mud holes to run through for our imaginary sideline touchdowns. And the snacks, while no more or less exciting than what we brought during soccer season, were somehow more satiating than before. And while the gnats swarmed in biblical plague-proportions on the sidelines, our son was infinitely less bothered by them than I was. It was almost as if his little broken spirit had resigned itself to a lifetime of this "new normal", where the older brother played sports and the younger brother kept himself tepidly entertained for 45-60 minutes at a time, with the hope of guilting the team parent in charge of snacks into tossing a spare set of Gatorade and Goldfish his way at the end of the game.

While the youngest might've accepted he was too young for organized sports, both he and his brother decided he was just the right age to make a competition out of every-damn-thing else. Brushing their teeth. Getting into the car. Finishing their food. Washing their hands. To the point that the phrase, "IT'S NOT A RACE!" echoes through the house on a continuous loop to this day, eventually punctuated by a muffled "GODDAMMIT!" and immediate time-outs every time they neglect to listen, inevitably hurting someone or breaking something.

Aside from impromptu games of "Who Blinks First" or "Who Can Scare Who Coming Out Of The Bathroom", sports and cars are the youngest son's main interests. And his cars are exclusively used for racing--epic, ongoing races that incorporate nearly every toy car he owns, races that are always "about to start" or "almost over" whenever you ask him to clean them up. These races usually require not only an audience, but a firm declaration of exactly which car you want to win. Even if you can muster the energy to care about the 100th race of the week and declare, "I want Nigel Gearsley to win", he’ll inevitably find a reason that you can’t back that particular car, forcing you to choose and re-choose until you ultimately arrive at the car he wants you to want. If he’s feeling sweet, he'll let your vehicle steer clear of each staged, fiery pile-up and possibly even win. But more often than not, your car will spin out in an accident so gruesome, it would ensure certain death of the driver in real life. Or he might arrange for a come-from-behind victory of his car over yours, where you both cross the finish line in a tangled mass, with his car ever-so-slightly ahead.

In response to the ubiquitous question "Who you wanna win in my race, Mommy?", I’ve learned to just ask, "Who do YOU want to win?" to expedite the process. To keep myself awake and engaged for endless incarnations of this routine, I started calling the race like Bob Costas' character in the Cars movie (aka, Bob Cutlass)--which, of course, creates another mandatory layer of parental participation in races that often occur multiple times a day, with no defined "finish line" in sight. Sometimes, I set a timer just to maintain a shred of sanity in powering through my 4th race of the day. Other times, he'll tire of my intermittent inquiries of "How many more laps?" or "Where's the finish line again?" and simply dismiss me from the room, so that he can continue talking to his cars on his own for as long as he wants.

The only indoor sport (besides racing) the boys still have room for is basketball, which is confined to no less than 3 designated locations in the house. There's the Dollar-Store hoop on the back of the closet in their shared bedroom, that the younger brother bought the older one when he broke the much nicer model Santa Claus brought (and refused to replace out of principle). And there's the arcade-style double-hoop set that keeps its own score and takes up half the room it's in. And last, there's the Little Tikes hoop in the finished attic known as "The Way-Up".

Our family friends' gift to our oldest son on his very first birthday, the Little Tikes hoop has withstood a test of time and punishment only the most well-loved toys endure. It adjusts from a height of 2.5 feet to a maximum of 4 feet as the child grows and is manufactured from the type of super-durable heavy plastic that could surely be dug up fully intact centuries after an atomic blast laid waste to all else around it. Before each boy was stable enough to stand on their own, they were bracing themselves against nearby furniture in the effort to dunk on the hoop's lowest setting. Almost 5 years later, the Little Tikes hoop has achieved full extension and is currently tethered to a doorknob by a synthetic Hawaiian lei, which helps prevent the whole thing from crashing down like the blade of a guillotine in response to a brutal barrage of vicious slam dunks.

The boys enjoy all 3 hoops to no end, but the Way-Up hoop has gotten the most attention lately as the focal point of the daily basketball championships I've been lending my amateur reporting skills to. On Saturday mornings, before Mommy and Daddy get up, we can hear the thundering mass of their unnaturally heavy but somehow still bony frames scrambling around in the Way Up above our heads, as they dive for loose balls and attack the (super-low) rim. Like always, they have their own rules and usually bring their games to an amicable conclusion before the weekend coffee is poured. They typically know better than to enlist me as commentator at that tender hour on a weekend, when Mommy is officially “on break” until all hell breaks loose--or at least until after I’ve showered for the day.

On weekday afternoons, however, before big brother gets home from kindergarten, little brother spars against Mommy in the Way Up under a completely different set of rules that solidly ensure I get my ass handed to me every time. With only one hoop, it’s a half-court game. So--because my younger son over-generalizes what constitutes a legal rebound and because Mommy firmly refuses to scramble for the ball--little brother is often free to dunk at point-blank range 3 or 4 times in a row, racking up as many as 12 points in a single possession. Meanwhile Mommy only shoots from 3-point range and doesn't have a whole lot of what the pros might refer to as "hustle"--so I tend to fall behind. The first person to get 100 points wins--which makes it go just slowly enough for him to feel like it's a real game and just fast enough for me to conveniently advance the score ahead 10 points or so without him noticing. "Yep. You're winning. 84 to 60. What? Of course. That's what I said. 94 to 60."

Sometimes, there's a half-time show, put on by yours truly, that’s comprised of a few haphazard cheerleading kicks and some vigorous clapping. Otherwise, my main purpose in the whole affair is first, to lose miserably; and second, to conduct the post-game interview with the plastic microphone that connects to his Fisher Price guitar. "So describe for the viewers at home how your tenacious D was so effective in stifling your opponent's offense." His responses are always vague ("...I just...did it...and..."), completely lacking in humility ("...my shots were just the best and..."), and intermittently interrupted by ear-splitting feedback from my primitive audio set-up.

But lately, as the screeching of the plastic microphone subsides and I watch this nearly 4-year-old carefully consider my made up questions, the script for a more authentic interview is writing itself in my head: When did you get so huge? How long before you can dunk on your mom for real? What contributed more to your current success? All the sleepless nights you mercilessly caused your mother? Or was it the gently warmed milk she lovingly microwaved for two years after weaning you, because you insisted on “hot nums”? When did you stop being chubby? And when you get so...old? When did...I... get so old? And how long before my MVP status in your heart is permanently revoked in favor of all the other things little boys eventually care more about than their mommy?

Of course, there are other times when my questions might include, "Are you F'ing psycho?" like when he loses to his brother at something and then charges him like a raging bull; and "Could you explain for the viewers why you insist on losing your shit every time I tell you to wash your hands?" But those questions are more rhetorical in nature. And clearly not age-appropriate.

A week ago, he finally got to suit up in his own pair of cleats and shin guards for his very first day of real soccer practice. To his surprise and utter elation, they also gave him his very own jersey with a number on the back, an unexpected addition to the existing rotation of 3 NFL jerseys he wears like a uniform every day that I will let him. It all comes not a moment too soon--the new jersey, because at least one of his other favorites is already a crop-top on him--and the chance to really play, because he’s wanted it so badly for so long.

Ever since he crossed the threshold of 3-and-a-half, he’s described himself as a “big 3-year-old”, as opposed to the “little 3-year-old” he apparently was before. Today, he can start calling himself a four-year-old, if only a "little 4-year-old", according to his previous logic. It seems like he's been a baby forever--partly because he kept me up nearly 20 hours a day for the first year of his life--and partly because he is and always will be "the baby". Nevertheless, as noted by the nurse at his last well-visit, who measured his height twice in disbelief, saying, “No...that can’t be right…”-- there's really nothing "little" left about him. He’s a head taller than most of his preschool classmates and solid as a boulder in jogging pants. The only way I can carry him now is via piggy-back, lest I throw out my shoulder from his heft. And he’s growing too fast for hand-me-downs from a brother just 21 months older than him (who’s taller than average in his own right). At this rate, he will be able to legitimately dunk on me. Most likely, by middle school.

But for now, he’s still just a big little boy, relishing his first crack at soccer. And during his triumphant debut, after scoring his first real goal in somewhat “regulation” play, he turned to his parents and older brother on the sidelines, a satisfied smile on his face as he ran past. This is Mommy McMommy, I thought proudly to myself, Reporting live from soccer practice, where my youngest MVP just...went...all...the...waaay!!!!

May it be the first of many more hopes and dreams realized. Whatever those turn out to be.

Happy Birthday to the biggest little boy I know

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