We went down south to visit Bug's aunt & uncle and cousins, one of whom had a four-game Pre-Teen Amazonian Thunderdome Soccer tourney this weekend. The image of exhaustion above is the result of Bug standing/clapping/playing in the North Carolina sun for four hours as the the tourney unfolded.
My niece loves to play, which, um, diverges sharply from my unfulfilling experiences playing sports as a kid. Sports in the 80s were an Office Space-style environment for me: they bored the hell out of me while continuing to be a source of stress.
Combine my underwhelming experiences with the fact that my wife went to NYC public schools -- where devoting your time to acting, film, writing or most anything using your right brain was the smarter route to adolescent social success -- and I was pretty sure I'd make only perfunctory efforts to steer Bug toward athletics.
But my niece, who scores two goals while playing on the team that ran the tables in the tournament won the whole thing, loves playing enough that even an old benchwarmer like me can't miss. If Bug takes a shine to a sport, I guess I'll pretty quickly morph into the parent living through his kid's athletic achievement.
