Hoop Dreams

Jack really likes playing outside, and because I was a little tired of seeing him battle Charlie for tennis balls and do little more than climb in and out of patio furniture, I decided it was time to get him another backyard toy. Granted he's been kind of enjoying the slide of late, which is fun, but I wanted him to have something new.

So it was that we zipped off to Toys'R'Us this morning to find him something to launch his career in sports. Since this isn't about me, I won't dwell on my own sports background, beyond saying that the one sport I never showed the slightest proficiency in -- or for that matter great interest in -- was basketball. Naturally, I got him a child's basketball hoop.

The reasoning was simple: getting a 17-month old a golf club or baseball bat and expecting him to hit a ball with it seemed overly optimistic. In the first place there are plenty of grown men and women who can't achieve such a thing even now, and in the second place, Jack loses patience with a spoon or other utensil just a few bites into his meal, casting it aside in order to work with his hands directly. I'm sure he'd do the same with a golf club, at least at this point.

(While at Toys'R'Us, of course, we also got a dinosaur puzzle, which he loved and instantly proved that he does in fact know the world puzzle, and a step stool so he could wash his hands at the sink. The stool he proceeded to carry around with him for the next hour or so until we managed to distract him and hide the thing back in the bathroom, where it lives until he finds it again.)

So during his nap I set up the hoop, and that afternoon we went outside. I showed him the hoop, gave him the mini basketball, and he immediately carried the ball over to the hoop and dunked the thing, proving he's either a basketball prodigy and we'll all be millionaires when he's the top pick in the NBA Draft at age 18, or else they have one of these things at day care.

In any case, he spent the next hour or so dunking the ball, watching it bound away across the yard after bouncing off the base, chasing it down, bringing it back to the hoop, and dunking it again. I alternated beaming with joy and making sure my very interested dog didn't seize the ball and puncture it as it rolled across the back patio. (We got some good work in on "leave it!")

Jack and I are a long way from heading up to Washington Park and challenging a couple of toughs to a game of 2-on-2, but it was great to see him quickly adapting to the sport, and reassuring to think he'd have a new toy to be interested in for the next week and a half. At which point I'll go out and get him that child's golfing set, because you never know. Maybe he HADN'T ever seen a basketball hoop before, and just had some innate athletic ability that will carry him through his childhood and on to fame and fortune in the Olympics. And maybe, just maybe, the first time he sees a golf club and ball he'll be hitting them onto the highway a mile away. Look out, Tiger Woods: you may be chasing Jack (Nicklaus), but another Jack might one day be chasing you.