Parents R Lame

Tonite you learned to jump. We came back from dinner and you were wired up. You wouldn’t stop moving around. I told you, “If you don’t sit down and watch your movie (Toy Story), I am going to watch sports.” You said, “I want to watch sports.” Surprised, I turned it to football; then realized this was my chance to watch the Spurs beat the Mavs. So I turned on the recorded game I wanted to watch. And you watched basketball with me. We saw Duncan dunk, and I told you that one day you’d be tall enough to dunk, unless you have my short genes, which you don’t.

After watching for a few minutes, you realized that you had your own basketball, and you started looking around for it. We looked upstairs and found a flat kickball which we played with, until we found your real basketball. We played catch for awhile and you tried to dribble by hitting the ball against the floor, without really bouncing the ball, which you got a kick out of.

Then, we started to play jump with the ball. I knew that you did not know how to jump. Your jump is more like an in place skip, starting on one foot and ending on the other, like a one footed leap to the next foot without any vertical lift. Not a real jump.

I showed you that if you bend at both knees and then straighten really fast with force, it would be a jump. You liked to bend at the knees, like a frog, but when the quick straightening happened, it turned out to be the in place skip of old. That is until the third time you tried. On that third try, both knees straightened and very briefly both feet left the ground--simultaneously. A textbook leap. A jump. Never before had Grant jumped, but today it happened.

You grinned and I praised you. And the fourth try was the same ole in place skip. But somewhere in that mind there was a set program to leap and leave this Earth, if only by one inch.