No Playing Ball In The House

No playing ball in the house, we’ve all heard this before.  I have.  It seems like once a day during summer as a kid and to this day I can still hear a chorus of this sentence echoing in my head. Spoken by parents, teachers, aunts, and a slew of babysitters, the no playing ball in the house movement gained momentum and was strictly enforced. Now, the NPBITH rule is back to haunt me, even as little footballs and basketballs litter our house from one end to the other.  But these days I have one thing going for me--I'm an adult.  Well adult-size anyway, and if I want to play ball in the house that's exactly what I'll do.  When Mom's gone of course...

And that's just what happened the other day when Mom stayed late for parent/teacher meetings and Dad was left in charge of house and child.  It was only a matter of time before a ball was picked up and playing commenced.

It all started harmlessly enough.  Just rolling the ball back and forth on the floor with my son. Then we moved on and took a few shots on the goal.  I picked Simon up so he could dunk it.  After a while he lost interest, but not me, I was just getting warmed up.  I tossed the ball off of the wall. 

No, that’s not a Dr. Seuss line, but instead the spark that ignited the fire.

“Okay Simon, watch Daddy bounce the ball off of the wall near the window all the way into the goal.”

I slung the ball at the wall and with a ping it shot across the room, just missing the goal by an inch.  Maybe a foot, but close enough to where I wasn’t going to stop until I made the shot.

Again, Ping!  This time even closer.  Simon looked at me with a grin.  And who was I to deprive this kid of some fun?  So I slung the ball a few more times and….

The ball bounced off the wall....swish!  Dad raised his hands in victory. What a shot. And that should have been the end of it.  But no, bolstered by my amazing shot I raised the difficulty level, my eyes darting to the corners of the room, gauging angles and calculating distances.  With Simon looking on I zipped the ball over the door jam but instead hit the corner of the door and the little basketball became an orange blur of destruction, ricocheting like a comet where it crashed onto the dresser and knocked the Ferrous Sulfate dropper (my son doesn’t have a chemistry set, just low iron), into the air and onto the rug with a splash...

Uh oh.

Simon looked at me with wide blue eyes that mirrored my own.  Crap kid, I thought, you’re not even old enough for me to blame this on yet. 

I wiped up what I could, dabbing the affected area with diaper wipes in hopes to hide the evidence.  But the thing about Ferrous Sulfate is that you cant’ see it until it dries.
So I guess the whole no playing ball in the house rule is there for a reason. Who Knew? Not that we learned anything here.  Well, I did learn that I can make some really cool trick shots on that goal…and that maybe we should get a darker rug.