This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit my son and his family. He has two daughters, who are three years old and five years old. They are joyful, fun-loving, energetic and very tiring kids (in a good way), and we love them to death. The oldest granddaughter just started playing basketball at the local YMCA. Okay... 'playing' basketball is really stretching it when you are talking about a team made up of three to five year olds. And they only practice for maybe one hour a week. The games are four, six-minute periods (or something close to that) so it was really a quick game.  We were in and out of there.

It's really a free-for-all because most of the rules are ignored because they are little kids.  No one is getting called for traveling, because in their excitement of being the one with the ball, they forget to dribble as they run down the court. The baskets are very low. The court length is short. There is no jumping for balls as there is such a height difference and not to mention the fact that most of them would be smacked in the face with the ball. The referee is mainly there to point them in the right direction, make sure the other team has the ball after their opponent scores a basket and calls them back to the floor from their water break between periods. The referee for this game even had a cast boot on her foot while she did this, so there is not much running. It's more entertaining than work, I'm sure. 

The best part of this little five-member team is that it was made up of my granddaughter's playmates and their siblings. It's basically an organized sport play date. The team consisted of a set of twin girls who were five, their three-year-old brother, their four-year-old male cousin and my five-year-old granddaughter.  

I was told that she played very well and scored several baskets at her last game, so I was given high expectations (but took them with a grain of salt, ha ha, because I, too, was the parent of a five-year-old girl many moons ago). 

I got a really great action photo of my granddaughter jumping to shoot a basket, some video of her actually making a basket, and some other video of her crawling around on the floor with ball, while everyone else was shooting baskets during practice. My son and daughter-in-law were uncomfortable when she did this, but I just laughed because... Kids!  She was just having fun, doing her thing, not caring how it looked. And isn't that part of the whole experience? For the kids to have fun, maybe learn some teamwork or even a few rules about the game? I did notice there were a few ringers on the opposite team. Little boys shorter than my granddaughter who are clearly being trained to play in the NBA someday. They were cute as hell, could really make some great shots, but I think they have intense jock dads...

The one thing the team has learned is that defense means you stand under the basket with your arms up in the air and make every attempt to not look for who is shooting the ball. It's pretty hysterical to see all of them, tightly clustered under the basket, with their arms up, some having zero idea of why they are doing that. The referee did step in a few times to herd the group out from directly under the basket, probably so they wouldn't all get bonked on the head by the ball coming down from a shot to the basket. 

My granddaughter managed to trip over her feet during the first period, fall flat on her face, hurt her knee which ended up with her crying self on my daughter-in-law's lap for the rest of that period, so the team played with only four players for a few minutes, which was clearly no big deal to them. She got over it and went back in for the second period. 

I think one of the twins got fed up with the other team being ahead score-wise, so she started yanking the ball out of the boys' hands. That was pretty damn funny, especially since she had a good five inches in height on some of them. She was the most competitive person on that team. When I mentioned it to my son, he said "yeah, she's a competitor." And I heard the admiration in his voice.

Ugh, we raised one of THOSE dads.... without meaning to.... I'm going to blame my husband.....

During the third period things got really interesting. When either of the twins got the ball, their dad would yell for them to run down the court and instead, they would just stop in the middle of the court and hand the ball to their three-year-old brother, the shortest player on the team. He would run down to the basket, attempt a shot, which would make it halfway up to the basket. This happened several times.  My granddaughter, who loves to show off, would also end up with the ball and we'd be camera-ready as proud grandparents, only to watch her stop and pass it to one of the twins. Every. Single. Time. We were very perplexed by this as we were told she likes to score baskets. Come to think of it, I don't think anyone asked her after the game why she kept doing this. She did score three baskets, earlier in the game but apparently decided that she had scored enough after that ha ha. 

The most exciting moment of the game happened during the final period. After one of the twins handed the ball, yet again, to her three-year-old brother, he took off running so hard down the court that his shoe came off. The whole team stopped playing, gathered around him, and helped put his shoe back on, while the game clock ticked on.  I think that was the most hysterically funny, and the most compassionate thing we saw that day. Clearly, the kids are being taught some great values. The shoe was replaced, and the game continued but to no avail. They ended up losing (there were ringers on the other team I'm telling you!) and really, none of them cared. 

This made me think of all the times I didn't try something or get involved in something I knew nothing about because I didn't want to appear foolish or ignorant or have people look at me weird because of my ineptness. These kids don't fear anything like that at all. They really don't care what strangers think of their performance or knowledge. They are thinking they are going to hang with their peeps, run around a bit and play some sort of ball game. They want to do well, but their definition of doing well falls far below any expectation that adults might set for themselves. The kids truly just want to enjoy the experience.  They don't shy away from the unfamiliar. They say "huh.... I wanna try dat...." and off they go. 

Being afraid of what people think can drive us in directions we shouldn't go, can direct us away from paths that would lift us up, nurture us and give us something we may need. It could also mean a lost opportunity for something at your job, some enjoyable life-altering event or something as simple as finding a new way to relax and reduce our stress.  It can also be that we put off something we need for our physical and mental health because we fear we will not be good at it... like diet or exercise.

Part of the growth experience for us humans is to step out of our comfortable box and do things that might be good for us, whether we feel we will be successful at them or not. So, when are going to play basketball like nobody is watching?

(photo courtesy of Markus Spiske)