Okay, I’ll admit it. I have failed my children. None of the three know much about – or have any interest in – team sports. It seems almost sacrilegious to say this, but I will have no trouble deciding what to watch on Monday night. National election results will be on my TV; the baseball game will hardly cross our minds.
The kids come by their sportslessess not only by virtue of lack of exposure, but by genetics. Neither their father nor I had the gene either. I’d much rather compete against myself than be part of a sports team. I’d rather do yoga than play soccer. I’d rather take a day-long hike than run in a race. And I’d far rather sing than play baseball.
For most of their young lives, this didn’t matter to my kids. They did play the almost-requisite house league soccer when they were young, but that was because I pushed them. Eventually as a single mother, it became impossible to manage three games in three parts of the town at the same time, so soccer was cast aside with no complaints.
My eldest played softball for one year and had no interest in doing it again. They did all spend time in the pool, with my eldest taking his qualifications high enough to become a swimming instructor. My second got as far as lifeguarding, and my third will get there this spring. Note, however, that this is all about acquiring valuable skills and eventually a job – not about competing to see who could swim the fastest.
We happily meandered along through our lives sans sports until a few years ago, when my daughter – then about 13 – decided she wanted to watch a hockey game. “Uh oh,” I thought, with concern. “There must be a boy.”
So as I puttered around in the kitchen that Sunday afternoon, she watched a hockey game, getting progressively more and more exasperated. Finally, she turned to me and said. “Mum, I don’t get it…!”
A slight sense of panic set in. She was going to ask me to explain icing, or some obscure hockey rule, and I was up to the task. “What don’t you get?” I asked tentatively.
She heaved a sigh and blurted out, “Why do they keep calling them the Canadians? Both of the teams are from Canada!.”When I picked myself up off the floor, simultaneously excited that I actually could answer that question, and deeply sad that her knowledge of this quintessentially Canadian sport was so shallow, I managed to explain to her through my stifled laughter that while yes, it was Ottawa and Montreal playing, the Quebec team was called the Canadiens! We didn’t bother getting into why they had an H on their jerseys.
She didn’t watch another game, so I guess the boy wasn’t worth the frustration.
A couple of years have passed, and now the Toronto Blue Jays have a chance (albeit growing smaller by the game) of getting to the World Series of baseball. We know more as a family about baseball than hockey, I thought. So I was somewhat surprised, when son #2 and I were discussing umpire calls over dinner, to hear my daughter ask,
“What’s an ump?”
I guess I still have work to do!
