Yes, there's something to be said for napping as a sport. For one thing, you don't have to buy snazzy sausage outfits,
which look like they're made of recycled tires anyway, so how comfortable can they be? And you don't have to wear form-fitting Spandex that cunningly highlights all your lumps. Nope, you can wear a baggy old
nightgown or a tee-shirt and jeans. Clothing's not a problem in napping. And neither is equipment. Most of us already have beds and, by Jove, that's all the equipment you have to own to nap.
Individual technique, preparation and training differ from napper to napper, of course, but it's a sport in which anyone can participate and it doesn't require gym membership to do it.
Unfortunately
for my children -- and my son in particular -- my husband refuses to recognize napping as a sport, although I've caught him engaging in the practice a few times while sprawled out in his recliner. Usually
those moments take place when he's just finished consuming dinner and the marathon sporting event he's been watching lapses into commercials for less-than-manly stuff like dish detergent that doesn't chap
your hands. But -- even though the man occasionally naps -- he prefers the perennial but dull sports of football, basketball, baseball and sausage-clad Olympic events.
Enter my son, a child who is
twice as tall as his best friend and outweighs almost every other nine-year-old in the county. His idea of a sport is reading, although he is partial to riding his bike and swimming.
His father
would like for him to play ball. Now, when my husband says "ball" he means a sport using a ball. So he suggested football. Nope, says my son who has well-developed survival instincts, I don't want all those
big guys chasing me and falling all over me. Basketball? Nah. Can't hit the basket if it's a foot from the ground. So that leaves baseball and, since it just happens to be baseball season, my son has been
drafted into playing baseball.
Uh, perhaps playing is a bit of an overstatement. From the looks of it, he seems to be more hanging around a baseball field in a uniform than actually playing the game.
So my husband, who is trying to avoid the agony of defeat, is teaching him the game. This is not going to be a sweet summer.
At first glance, the kid appears to be a chip off the old block.
Unfortunately, the block he's been chipped from appears to be his world-class napping mother instead of his "If it's a sport, I'll watch it" father, a man who thinks sweating is a noble pastime.
So
the sports addict in the house decided to mold the male child into a smaller version of himself, only without the remote control and recliner. And when baseball season came along and all the boys in the
neighborhood decided to play, we signed up our World Series hopeful. And to make things even, his best friend, Ryan, also got into the act and is on a team.
So far, we're deep into the season and my
son's team has not yet won a game. This is frustrating for the fathers on the team who like to high five each other when one of the batters hits a home run when the bases are loaded. I know they like to do
this because my husband and I sit in the bleachers and watch the fathers on the opposing team doing this -- a lot.
Yes my child's team has dropped the first couple of games. It's heart-breaking to
see the angst and soul-searching that go on following these losses. And those are the dads. The kids -- well, they aren't quite as concerned about winning as their parents are. And you can tell by the team
batting technique which is called: swing at anything that moves. While this approach has yet to result in a win, it does have it's benefits. For one thing, the games are a whole lot shorter this way.
Both my son and Ryan are outfielders. They wear snazzy uniforms with matching socks and nice new gloves. They spend most of their time in the outfield pretending to pay attention to what the batter is
doing. Ryan, who doesn't know the name of his team, confessed the other day that he doesn't think much of the outfield.
"Because nothing ever happens out there."
