A Not-So-Sporting Life.

I was hovering around the snack table at a birthday party recently and started talking to a woman whose daughter was the same age as Kira. We both thought we had seen each other before and tried to figure out where our paths might have crossed. She mentioned some activities we possibly had in common: Soccer league? Summer softball? Basketball camp? I told her it was highly unlikely she had seen anyone in our family at these events, since it would have required us to be outside, chasing a ball and breaking a sweat. I threw out some suggestions of my own: Fighting over a muffin at Starbucks? Buying toilet paper at the grocery store after midnight? She left to talk to someone else after that, which was fine since she was starting to hog all the dip.

As you can tell we're not a team-sports kind of family. Rigel is an avid tennis player and plays once a week, but he never played on any teams when he was young. I played basketball when I was around 11, but it was pure torture, and my most vivid memory is of falling off the bench during a game. I'd like to say it was because of a heated girl-fight over a bad foul, but in fact it happened when I leaned over to see how many minutes until lunch and fell on my face when my feet got tangled in each other. The coach never let me play much after that, which wouldn't have been so bad if he didn't insist that I sit on the floor wearing a helmet.

I often feel pressured to involve our kids in sports but I'm not knocking it altogether. I think the physical exercise it provides and the camaraderie is important, and hey - those teeny cleats are so dang cute! It's just that having two daughters who have absolutely no interest in joining a team, who would rather design the soccer uniforms than wear them, makes us definite outsiders. Sometimes when I tell other parents our Saturday plans involve neither games, tailgate parties or tournaments they eye me suspiciously, like I had just told them we'd be holed up in our house all weekend cooking up big vats of meth instead.

I admit that Rigel and I aren't exactly inspiring our kids to become team players, but let me just say that they do get their share of exercise - at least twice a year we insist that they turn off their Nintendos, put down their liter-bottles of Coke and go outside. But breaking free of our DNA is hard, and they gravitate towards activities where it's not necessary for them to co-exist peacefully with twelve other players or where they don't have to learn to lose gracefully. They play badminton, or handball or lately they've been rollerskating - not rollerblading, but the four-wheel kind, which is what all the young kids are doing. Or at least they used to - FIFTY YEARS AGO.

And it gets better! We just bought a croquet set - can we possibly get any nerdier? We're having fun playing it, but unfortunately I can't get enough people together to form a league and there don't seem to be any listings for croquet tournaments on ESPN. Once they get tired of this, I'll be signing the girls up for shuffleboard and then dropping them off at the senior center for big-stakes bingo.

When Kira was six and most of her friends were already on their fourth year of team sports, I thought it was time to join the ranks and sign her up. I was getting tired of going to other peoples homes and seeing those trophies for "Best Goalie In Diapers" and hearing about the baseball scholarships they'd already secured for their fancy preschools. I told her she could choose any sport she wanted and I'd find a team for her to join. She thought about it for a few minutes and after some careful consideration told me, "Jumprope."

I have to admit I loved that answer, and it makes me think about how happy my girls would be if they were allowed to continue to keep playing as children. What about a Freeze-Tag Tournament, or a World Series of Hopscotch? I know that's just the sports nerd in me and they may not always prefer a birdie over a bat. But in the meantime I'll be outside, kicking the hackeysack around with them and setting up their tetherball.

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tags: sports | kids+sports |people who might enjoy curling

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