A Couple of Things

My father partially tore and Achilles tendon a few weeks ago, effectively ending a nearly 40 year basketball career that took place every Saturday morning and an occasional weekday evening too. I wrote about it in this crazy blog. As I said in that blog entry; it was the end of an era.

I visited my parents last weekend. Both are in good health although my father is still limping around on a sore Achilles tendon. Yesterday after work my mother called me to say that there is talk that my father might coach some boys’ youth league team. One of the men my father used to play with made the inquiry. My mother seems to think it is a church team which would be ironic since my father does not know what the inside of a church looks like. My mother is all excited about my father coaching but Dad has not yet committed himself to it.

My father would be an amazing basketball coach for kids. I don’t know that there is anything about basketball that he does not know. He often watches basketball games on TV with the sound muted. He calmly says he does this because when it comes to basketball, he knows as much as the commentators, and also, my mother likes the quiet. I have watched sports with Dad with the TV’s sound on and I have heard him make a comment about some almost unseen aspect of a play such as a rule violation or a point of strategy, and then a few seconds later the TV commentator will express the same thing. Sometimes it is kind of uncanny.

But Dad would be a great youth basketball coach not because he knows basketball, but because he would never demand winning, just a good effort. He knows how to have fun playing basketball, win or lose. He did it for 40 years. When it comes to my dad, the worst player on the team might be the recipient of his highest accolades.

My father would be a great coach. I hope he does it.

In other Katie blog news; yesterday evening I was hit-on at my fitness center, hit-on in the social sense, not in the assault and battery sense. I was on an elliptical when one of the male members climbed aboard the elliptical to my right. He seemed a bit confused as to how to program it, so I gave him a brief tutorial. At my fitness center there are a number of members who use the extensive weightlifting equipment. The guy who I talked to seemed to be one of them, given his build.

He used the elliptical for only a few minutes before dismounting and going elsewhere in the facility. A short time later, when I was wiping off my elliptical at the conclusion of my self-inflicted thirty minutes of misery, the same guy suddenly appeared. He quickly told me his name and asked me if I would like to go out for a drink later. He seemed to be very nervous, which I guess would be understandable, given his forward approach. I, on the other hand, was caught off-guard by the invitation. After a second or two of getting my senses back, I politely muttered something like, “Thank you but I don’t think so.” I can only guess that is what I said, because I just babbled out something spontaneously.

There are girls who have been hit-on far more often than have I, but believe it or not, I have been hit-on a few times in my life. If the criterion is the guy being a total stranger, then none of the overtures were successful with me. However, I have fallen prey to an offer from a guy with whom I was only an acquaintance.

I have thought about it on occasion over the past 24 hours and I think my reaction to being hit-on by a total stranger can bring on one of three feelings, or probably more accurately; some combination of each. One feeling is of annoyance. A second feeling would be that of being creeped-out. The third feeling would be flattery. Yesterday, after I had time to think about it, my reaction was about 30% flattery and 60% annoyance. I think the other 10% would be my being creeped-out just a tiny bit. I would have felt a lot less annoyed and a lot more flattered if the guy had given me a chance to cool down, towel-off, and then had spoken to me somewhere other than in the middle of the fitness center floor. I would not have been rude had he initiated his overture with some simple conversation rather than a direct offer. He still would have gotten a “no thank you” but there might have been a little bit of regret in my voice when I said it.