Adventures In Tee Ball With Mr. Jabberbox

Things Nicholas said and asked in the twenty-minute drive from Daddy’s office, where we dropped off his siblings, to the baseball field:

Why is campus so small?

What do you mean, we’re at the edge of campus?

Where’s Daddy’s building?

This is the way to my school!

How do they make glass?

How do they make dirt?

Oooh yay, Lucky’s! (Lucky’s is a grocery store.)

How do they make apples?

Look, they’re building two houses!

Why did that woman honk at you?

(With occasional breaking into the Imperial March, when he runs out of other things to say.)

Things I heard in the half-hour wait at the ballfield for his game to start:

Why did you park there?

I think that is my coach.

Do you know how many kids my coach brings? ONE. Can you imagine that?

Did you know there are no girls on my team?

I think that is my coach.

Is that boy on my team?

Are we having juice?

I think that is my coach.

Do we have sunscreen?

Look at all those dandelions. They have a lot of dandelions. You hate dandelions.

Hey, I think I heard my coach.

I think that’s my coach, because he’s on a motorcycle.

Things heard on the ballfield, as the coaches tried to direct this crowd of five-year-olds:

Right field is over there!

You missed home plate, buddy.

Things observed during a peewee tee ball game:

Nicholas’ first swing at the ball perched on the tee was nothing but air and a bat going fwing-fwing-fwing toward the dugout. Of the ten kids on his team, he’s the only one who “got” that you’re supposed to drop the bat after you hit (one of them hit the ball and just stood there watching it arc across the field), but ahem, he’s missing a few other key pieces.

On the bench in the dugout, Nicholas and his teammates were wrestling, stealing each other’s hats, giggling, tickling–all horseplay, all the time. Once again I had to smile and shake my head at the difference between Nicholas and his older brother. Alex always sat with studious decorum in the dugout. Nicholas: cutup central.

It’s hard to imagine that within this bunch of kids spinning in circles, rolling in the grass, and chasing the ball in circles resides the future star players of our local high school teams.