Going with the flow

I'm no Earl Woods.

If I were of his caliber that I think I wish I was, the II would have gone to bed tonight with a Medicus gripped in his tiny, tired hands.

He'd be dreaming under a scaled-down painting of the 18th hole at Augusta; with the lights of his Titlelist Pro-V1 chandelier dimmed to a faint shine.

Instead, he's upstairs with an ice-pack on his head and a sweet vanilla soy milk pouch planted in his mouth because rolled off of the Lightning McQueen duvet on his new "big boy" bed. I suspect, that he might have been attempting an ankle-coiling cross-over dribble in his sleep, and took a highlight reel tumble off the side.

I've got the putting green in the back yard. He's got a near-complete set of Tiger's overpriced Nike sticks for kids; plus an off-brand junior set and plenty of second-hand clubs ready to be cut down to custom lengths for him.

But my boy wants to hoop, not chip and putt, right now.

Our evening routine centers around basketball. He'll rush me out of my work clothes into some version of the shorts/t-shirt/sneakers combo he's wearing. On easy nights we go out and clang on the 6-foot portable on our driveway. More often, he pleads to go out to the nearby public playground, or to its dank, adjacent inside gym if it happens to be unlocked and/or atteneded.

Tonight, at mommy's behest, we switched things up and went to the fancy new black YMCA, where the baskets crank mercifully down to 8 feet, and where foul-mouthed, n-word infused, malt liquor-fueled, saggy-pants play ain't allowed.

He had a blast. The winter-league coordinator took notice of his four-year-old dribbling skills - which are about as good as mine were when I was a JV scrub in middle school - and people shooting around on the other courts didn't seem to mind at all as he handle the ball all around them.

Stupid me: I started feeling like it was a wasted trip if he wasn't able to shoot high enough to score on the lowest rims in the cleanest environment I could find. So I kept prodding him to shoot from the one spot _ with bended knees and thrust and follow through - that gave him the best chance at a bucket.

After three tries he would have none of it.

"Daddy," he groaned, with a frown, "this is not practice. We're just playing."

I'd missed the point. All he'd wanted to do was taunt, "Come get me," and then dribble off. He just wanted another game pitting him (the Hawks) against me (the Short Barneys).

I get it now. Almost. T-ball season starts in four days, and he can't be bothered to practice fielding grounders. The footwork and toughness he showed during the soccer season that just ended makes me wonder if he should be exposd to that a lot more.

And, looking on the bright side, he said something very profound and encouraging as I helped with his post-hoops, apres-dinner poopie tonight.

"Daddy, read me a golf magazine."