Eye Hand Coordination

In one of Diana’s 30 trips to Target last week, she bought the boys a few balls to play with that weren’t completely covered in Grover spit. One of her purchases was a cute little baseball and mitt combo.

Elijah was particularly excited and requested I play a game of catch right after his bath. Rather than force him to put clothes on, I tossed him a few lobs in the kitchen, where his bits and pieces could wave in honor of our nation’s pastime.

After the third of fourth ball careened off his mitt and into his bits and pieces, huge guilt pangs set in. He is almost 5 years old and has yet to successfully catch a ball. Ever.

That is a parenting fail. I needed to get him some eye hand coordination stat. I racked my brain to find a place where we could play sports in the freezing cold.

Then in my mind’s eye, a Native American appeared like a vision quest. I had been taking peyote at the time. He spoke to me.

“Young man. There’s a place you can go.”

I said, “huh?”

He said, “I said, young man, when you’re short on your dough. You can stay there and I’m sure you will find many ways to have a good time. It’s fun to stay at the Y.M.C.A”

Oh yeah. We have a Y membership. I could take the boys to the free Family Fun Gym on Sundays from 10-11:30. Thanks homosexual Native American!

I took the boys to the Y with the purpose of teaching them both some ball handling skills. I grabbed a little bouncy yellow ball and attempted in vain to get Eli to catch the sucker. After the third or fourth bounce off his skull, Eli muttered, “Can we do something else, dada?”

I wondered if this was a time I should be pushing him. Should I be forcing him to play ball so he can date the prom queen? I looked around for fatherly inspiration.

The place was filled with dads yelling at their sons and daughters.

There were dads yelling at their kids under the basketball hoops. There were dads yelling at their kids in front of soccer nets and there was a dad who was yelling at his kid in a hoola hoop.

I chucked the ball at a little curly haired kid and declared we were playing Monster Chase. The rules were simple. Do not get eaten by the Dada Monster.

Both boys got a good cardiovascular workout and learned some valuable monster evasion skills.