A Chip off the Ole Block

Saturday morning, I pulled myself out the the post-r.e.m. haze and staggered downstairs to begin the arduous task of creating breakfast for the children (pour cereal into bowl, dump milk on top, find spoon). My children enjoy getting up at the very crack of dawn. In fact, I think they get up before dawn, quietly steal downstairs, turn on Noggin and Disney Channel and rot their brains view wholesome, educational television until I finally roust myself from my hibernative state and go on and feed them. My daughter is very clever and not only figured out how to work the remote to turn on the television AND the cable box, but also has learned which channels are Nickelodeon, Disney, Noggin and Cartoon Network. Boomerang still eludes her, but I'm confident she'll figure that one out soon enough. For, you see, as I was about to learn this past Saturday morning, she's figured out where other channels are that offer a slightly more adult fare.

As my feet met the chilled linoleum floor of my kitchen, I looked into the living room to see my daughter staring at the television, a rapt and attentive look upon her face. I thought nothing of it, though I did realize that the sounds coming from the television were not those of the usual Saturday morning cartoon extravaganza. After a moment or two, my daughter looked into the kitchen and smiled at me and said, "Guess what I'm watching, daddy?"

"What?" I replied.

"Basketball!" came her quick answer. "I'm rooting for Kansas to lose."

That drew a tear to my eye. I stepped into the living room to find that she was, indeed, watching basketball. Somehow, she had managed to land on ESPN-U, which was replaying an old Kansas/Missouri basketball game (from 1998, I believe). I watched for a couple of seconds, chuckled to myself, patted her on the sweet little blonde head, and went about fixing breakfast.

I love basketball. I love watching it. I love playing it. I love reading about it. My little girl is like me in this aspect, well, partially. She loves playing basketball. And now, apparently, she loves watching it, too.

What's even more fun than just watching basketball is going to her games. She's developed quite a bit over the past year. She has yet to score, but she likes to shoot. Her favorite shot is a little "baseline J" (more like a baseline H, as it's a hop-shot instead of a jumper), which was always one of my favorite shots, too (I'm also a fan of the 10-foot jump shot from the wing, but she's not strong enough to get the ball up from that distance). She's also turned into a momnster rebounder. Monster in that she doesn't try to rebound the ball while turning away from it (in that kind of "Aaaah! It's going to hurt me!" way). Instead, she grabs it with both hands and secures it.

While this has all been fun, perhaps the most...amusing...part of going to the games came last Friday night. She was bringing the ball up the court when the defenders all came out to mob her. She tried dribbling past them, but it was four-on-one, so she picked her dribble up. And then she kneed the kid standing over her in the stomach to move her out of the way. It wasn't a hard knee, it more like a gentle nudge to get her out of the way. When she got whistled for the foul (her first ever, I might add), she was like "I didn't see my knee move. I don't know what you're talking about."

A chip off the old block, indeed.