Friday, August 21, 2009

With Apologies to Paul Rubens, plus more eye candy

I wasn’t so very athletic in grade school, but there was always something cool about the balls.  Those were some heavy duty high-test playground balls they had for us.  The four-square balls - so big that they sort of wobbled when you hit them; the sock-balls - smaller, more rigid, more resilient when punched out into the playground; the kickballs - yellow, heavier, faster, less forgiving… and, of course, let us not forget: the pee wee balls.  These were a little bigger than softballs, very firmly inflated, lightning fast and light enough to soar unrivaled distances when soundly struck.  They were hard to catch but easy to throw.  They made sockball exciting again.  Those pee wee balls - they were some damn fine balls indeed. 

Like so many of the minor benignities that palliated my grammar school experience, like the charming steam radiators and the gnarled pepper trees, the pee wee balls faded from my thoughts not long after I left Riverside Drive Elementary and didn’t bother coming back again till fairly recently.  For it was but recently that Zach was playing with his little mini-fake soccer ball (or “MFSB"), a small white rubber ball with a pattern of black hexagons imprinted on it to replicate an old-school stitched-together euro-style football.  The MFSB wasn’t really a soccer ball, of course - it was too small, for one thing, and all made of one piece of rubber that was scored all over with a faint pattern of swirling hash marks. 

Those little marks rang a long-neglected bell for me, a bell that I promptly and cheerfully ignored.  The MFSB did not merit bell-rung cogitation.  It was nothing more than a child’s plaything; my enjoyment of it was the enjoyment of a dad playing with his son: vicarious, paternal, but not really specific to the ball itself.  Honestly, the MFSB was sort of weak - it didn’t bounce very well, didn’t travel very far when kicked.  It felt lethargic - “dead,” one might say, were one so inclined, which I really wasn’t.  I just did not care that much.  The MFSB was just another of Zach’s many toys, and no more inherently interesting to me than any of his other playthings.  In fact, to an extent, it was actually less interesting, because it was so underinflated.  It really wasn’t fulfilling its potential. 

A solution, though, was available to me - an actual sports pump, the sort with the metal needle you lube up with spit and then jam into a convenient inflation port.  Such a pump languished in my kitchen junk drawer.  Improbably, my dadly status had compelled me to go and get one of these devices months prior, to keep our little collection of basketballs and volleyballs and such in appropriate fettle.  And now it seemed I had yet another call for it, though this time on a ball of far lesser status than some of the others we owned.  The basketball and volleyball and “real” soccer ball were all made of traditional materials, looked and acted like they were supposed to.  Not like that little dead MFSB.  MFSB needed help, for sure. 

So I got out the device and employed it with the aplomb of one who’s done it for a lifetime, albeit only sporadically.  I pumped that sucker like it’s never been pumped before.  And it felt good.  It only took a few strokes before I realized what was happening.  That flaccid little MFSB was transforming in my now-trembling hands into a real live honest-to-goodness pee wee ball, just like I remembered them: bouncy and responsive, insoucient and eager for fun, textured with those micro-ridges like the tines of a thousand tiny forks, just a little more than a handful and ready for any kind of action you’ve got.  Any action I’ve got, anyway.  I was gobsmacked, thunderstruck, startled and shocked: after thirty-five years of ignoring how badly I wanted one, I was now suddenly on the verge of having a pee wee ball of my very own.  All I’d need to do was get rid of the kid, and the pee wee MFSB would be mine, all mine. 

Well, maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to dispose of the kid entirely.  Maybe I could sort of share the MFSB with him for a while - to start, at least. We’d just have to find a way to play with it together.  That didn’t seem so challenging, actually, since he’s such a great kid and I prefer to play with him than to do just about anything else.  And even more so now than ever before.  Because now, there’s a pee wee ball to toss around with him.  And one thing I learned in grade school was, that things go better with pee wee balls. 

That ball has never let me down since I pumped it up, either, although it did prove to be somewhat eccentric (which only endeared it to me more).  When you roll it, it sort of wobbles across the floor in the general direction in which you aimed it.  But if you just punch it or kick it or chuck it across an open field… oh baby, you can really get some air on that sucker.  It flies like a dream, and as it turns out, some dreams fly for thirty-five years or so. 

MORAL THE FIRST: Sometimes the right choice is a pee wee choice. 
MORAL THE LAST: The proper internal pressure makes all the difference in the world. 

But that can’t be the last word, it’s too much of a lead-in to spam comments flogging virility enhancers (yes, here those are spam, tyvm.) So check the extended entry for some photos.  Some are cool, some are cute, and one just documents a climactic moment in the history of humankind.  Do click through, won’t you?

Hey, glad you made it down here for the photorama.  Let’s dive in!  (and never ye forget to click-n-embiggen, right mateys?)

A few weeks ago we headed to the courthouse on a Monday morning to complete California’s legal adoption process for Jesse.  J-Dogg is a full-on clansman now, even in the myopic eyes of John Q. Law.  The bailiff took this photo.  I’m going to treat the framing as “photographie verite” and not crop it down.  There’s plenty of time for that now that Jesse’s papers are signed, sealed and delivered!

Right after the hearing on the adoption petition we went across the street to a little playground to burn off some steam.  And for a quick reminder of why we went through it all - it’s because this kid is just too sweet not to do everything for him.  See?

Afterwards we went to Park Chalet for a nice early lunch and run-around on their big lawns, and of course for me to take a bunch of crappy photosw which I will not impose on you.  But after that we went to Toy Boat for ice creams and pony rides (four bits for five minutes on the mechanical horse).  Zach and Jesse rode together, hooting their delight into the sunset - thus:

Good stuff, but now it’s time to go backwards.  The prior week we’d taken a hike up at Tomales, where the San Andreas Fault heads out into the open ocean and forms a bay that is calm and protected, with wide shallows and abundant wildlife (including some damn thing that was biting my feet and ankles like crazy, cut me open in two places, but it only occupies about the first six inches of water up and down the shoreline so if you step in a little farther they don’t bother you at all).  The boys helped each other and it was enough to bust my buttons:

Later we arrived back at the trailhead and had juice boxes.  (We’d gone out on the hike with one of Z’s friends from school.) If you want to see what real men look like after a full day roughing it in the wilderness, I suggest that you look HERE:

and of course, it’s not a wilderness hike unless one kid’s got a bug-catching cage, and another one is doing affirmation kung fu.  So this officially qualified as a wilderness hike.

Let’s have a little series now of transportation-related images.  First, the boys frantically dual-steering their gran prix-style shopping cart through the Safeway supermarket:

(bonus fact: as I took this photo, a slim effeminate man apparently capered and pranced behind me, trying to get the kids to pay attention to the camera.  I wish I’d known so I could have whipped around and got one of him, too.  Aw hell, he’d probably like it and pose or something....)

A few manipulated images now, of one of my favorite models of motor vehicle - the Fleetside Apache pick-up truck, as interpreted by west-side fog and fifty years of hard labor:

And here’s the vision of things to come - Z and J and I were at a local playground, J having ridden in a stroller and Z having ridden his push-bike.  He’d left the bike to play elsewhere, and J realized that this was his big chance.  He’s clearly making the most of it, and may god have mercy on my soul, on a going-forward basis…

Finally, this image was shot on Marina Green as the sun cast horizontally across the William Ralston monument that stands near the magnetic silencing rangehouse.  Yes, I messed with the color a little, but it’s pretty intense all on its own.

Okay, that was the last word.  Mahalo for your kokua, or whatever.  Have a good weekend, you crazy kids!