In Love and Basketball

I have this fatherhood thing on lock.  It's simple.  All you need is a strong combination of classical condition and strategic withholding of fatherly love to really mold a child into something special. I have no idea if Cameron is going to grow up to be "happy" or a "productive member of society," but I do know that he is of great amusement to me.  Allow me to run through a typical day in the life of Cameron Graves.  He starts off the morning with a game of NBA 2K 2014 on the IPAD.  He typically likes to be the Lakers or the Thunder.  He tirelessly feeds the ball to Kobe or KD, respectively.  I have found that his choice between the two is correlated with his mood for the day.  Kobe days are tough for everyone.  But sometimes he likes to be the Heat, so he can play with their power forward "Squish Squash" or their point guard "Mario Chompers."  What he lacks in auditory processing, he makes up for in cuteness.  When Ipad time is over, it's time for the real basketball to begin.  No exaggeration, he probably plays multiple hours of basketball a day.  We play one-on-one where he makes up which teams we are.  We play 2 on 0, where he is always Tony Parker and I'm Tim "Pumpkin."  He always keeps score.  He plays by himself.  He makes up drills that he does over and over.  After he pretends to get fouled, he lets you know the status of the personal fouls and team fouls before taking his foul shots.  He cannot pronounce personal.   No matter where he is in the house he senses if his little brother has the ball in his hands and comes sprinting to take it away.  His brother is usually casted as Tiago Splitter.  He is very passive aggressive.  Somewhere between all this basketball he does other things.  Those things are not important.  In the evenings we watch the NBA playoffs.  He only roots for the team that is winning.  But he won't cheer against the Thunder or Spurs.  I regale him with stories of Laker greatness.  I search for classic Laker victories on NBA TV.  I can only hope I'm doing enough.  At bed time we read a children's story about Chris Paul's childhood.  I make up a sequel about how an evil troll named David Stern kidnapped Chris Paul from the Lakers.  We curse David Stern and Blake Griffin until sleep over takes him.  We all hope tomorrow will be a KD day...

Ok, I might have gotten a little carried away with that rant.  But, like 90% of that is true.  He's super into basketball right now and it's really fun.  I don't know how to break the news to him that he's probably going to be 5'9'' and that could, possibly, hinder his long term success.  Instead, we signed him up for tennis lessons this summer. 

Another really funny thing is hearing Cam re-tell the religious stories he learns at school.  Christianity by Cam is hilarious.  My favorite was the time he told us about how "Jesus was in the doghouse until his friend Smokey J told him to come out."  After some digging, it's possible he was recounting the story of Lazarus.  But, I like to believe that Smokey J is the gangster nickname Jesus had for James.  My second favorite is when I was talking to Cam about somebody named Jose.  Cam proceeded to tell me tabout how all the people in the bible "threw there jackets in the mud and shouted Jose, Jose."  I'll let you figure that one out.

Onto the younger child.  He is adorable right now.  He is a smiling, waiving, peek-a-boo playing little ball of perfection.  And that dude loves to push himself to the limits of his physical abilities.  He wants to climb everything he can get to.  One of his favorite past-times is to climb on top of (insert noun here), stand up, and look at you with delight.  If you turn your back on him for 10 seconds he will be standing on top of his riding fire truck like he's about to go surfing.  There may or may not be multiple home videos of him accomplishing such feats and.... then falling really hard on the floor.  I guess that is what movie editing software is for.  Based on his combination of attractiveness and affinity for stage-like platforms, I'm predicting he is going to be runway model.  Then again I could also see major head trauma in his future.  Thankfully those two paths aren't mutually exclusive.

You miss both 0% and 100% of the shots you don't take,
Father