Teens, Tennis and Texas Hold 'em

Today marks the one week anniversary of no bad news in the family, which is quite remarkable for us. I don't remember when a whole week went by without one of the kids failing to think before they did something stupid. Sad but true. This week was very different. Maybe it was the one month span since they got out of school for the summer. Maybe they are bored and need attention. It is just shocking that after so many years that they actually want to hang out with their parents. For example now in the evenings my middle son always wants to play cards with out fake poker chips. He has been watching TV where they show world class poker players. They typically play Texas Hold 'em, which is a new game for me, but very easy to learn. In just a week my son has learned how to maintain a poker face, whereas at the start you could obviously tell when he had a good hand as he got excited about it. The nice thing about playing cards is that you talk about life in general since it is not that mentally challenging. The other event I have already mentioned in previous postings, where my oldest and youngest son want to play tennis with me as soon as I get home.

I remember when I was a young teenager and found tennis the greatest thing ever. We would play every day after school for a couple of hours. We rotated which courts we played on just to keep life exciting but normally which ever one we could find that was free. I took tennis quite seriously until I was a sophomore in high school and ended up breaking my right wrist right at the start of tennis season. I wish I could say it was from diving for a tennis ball on match point or some other brave event. However, it actually happened in our high school gym when it was raining outside and we were practicing tennis indoors in the gym. I was only 5'7" and a couple people told me there was no way I could even touch the basketball rim, so of course I had to show them. I took a tennis ball in my hand and ran from half court and dunked the tennis ball to everyone's amazement. The only problem was on my way down I got my hand caught in the basketball net and lost my balance and fell back on my arm. That ended my tennis career. I kind of fell out of sports in general and started a bad life on the wild side. It was not until I got married that I took up the sport again as my wife and I played a couple of hours every day until our oldest son was born. In between high school and my marriage, I grew 6" my freshman year in college so took up basketball which was originally my favorite sport. I lost interest in basketball in high school since I was took short for the team. Even though clearly I was never professional quality at any sport, I certainly enjoyed playing team sports regularly until I turned 40 and decided to retire while I was completely healthy.

The one thing I have done consistently since the seventh grade is run. I ran on the high school cross county team and was the youngest person to ever get a varsity letter at our school as I was a ninth grader. I loved to run on county dirt roads typically 8-10 miles a day. Back then it was important how quickly I ran each mile. I ran to keep in great condition for basketball and tennis. Now I am still running 30 years later as I enjoy it, but don't even care how long it takes me to run each mile. My only goal now is to be running when I turn 50 years old.

kids and cards

It must have been the perfect weather with a cloudless sky and spring like temperatures that finally got all of the kids outside at the same time. I started washing my filthy car as it had not been bathed since last fall, mostly due to the water shortage in this region. Before I knew it my daughter came out to help me. By the time we moved onto my wife's van, I looked up and was shocked to see the boys watching us. Not that they were there to help but at least they were out of their rooms.

Later in the afternoon, my daughter and I played cards for the first time in a long time. We failed miserably to win any of our two-handed solitaire games, but as usual we enjoyed talking to each other about everything in general and nothing in specific. After several attempts we gave up and moved onto Uno. It is one of my daughter's favorite card games. She just likes to play and is not worried about who wins really.

Both of these events remind me of my childhood. I used to play all kinds of games with my mother but was a really bad loser. I still don't know why she played with me, but it must have been the word "love". I would get physically angry when I lost at any game as I was so competitive about everything I did. I played football, basketball and baseball in leagues, but I guess I brought that with me when playing games at home with family. Looking back that just seems so stupid of me. That was not the height of stupidity as I did many other such things that would rank much higher.

The other thing I remember is that it seemed like endless chores. On every other Saturday morning I dusting all of the furniture in the house - now today, who even knows what in the world that means? At least I had a sister who did it the other Saturdays. I chopped wood for our fireplace and sometimes did the same for a couple of elderly women in town. I mowed several lawns and at least got paid for doing them. I had to weed our nearly one acre garden. I had to wash the dishes every other night after supper. Most of these responsibilities increased when I became the official man of the house at 14 years old, after my parents divorced. That is when I got to paint the whole outside of the house, fix things that broke around the house and wash and wax the cars. Looking back I am glad I grew up on a small farm as I learned the definition of hard manual labor and responsibility, mostly from forced chores. I did not like the divorce as my family life was not pleasant in that regard and this one event single handily changed the course of my whole life for the worse. That is one of the reasons I am so determined to not let that happen my own kids.

So let the kids and car washing followed up by playing cards continue...