Memories...

So this weekend I went to the parental’s house to visit with my sister and her brood (yes, anything after 3 kids becomes a “brood) and my cousin. He’s my cousin for sure, I think our dads are first cousins, so I am not quite sure what that makes us. (3rd cousins, something removed?) But anyway, he is a referee for high school and college basketball, and he was working my old high school’s game on Saturday night, so off we went.

(There is this blog that I read where instead of using her husband’s or friend’s real names, she just uses their initials. Sounds great right? Except each of my 3 sisters have the same initial…so that wouldn’t work for me. My sister who lives overseas asked to be called Cleopatra, Queen of all the Universe, which I shortened to Cleo. This sister, I’ll just call her Elizabeth, after another queen…because we all are)

Anyway, so Elizabeth and I can’t remember the last time we have been back to high school, and we are amazed at how it is exactly. the. same. Same ugly blue tiles on the walls of the lunchroom, same ugly pink tiles on the walls of the bathroom. Of course, they did get rid of the death bleachers and replaced them with slightly less dangerous ones. (Makes me wonder how many little kids fell through before they thought that just maybe it might be a good idea to have bleachers that the students couldn’t rock 3-4 feet side to side.) The bathrooms still had that weird strawberry smell. The only thing that really changed was the names on the doors of the head guys…now they all are people that Elizabeth went to high school with. Including the basketball coach, the assistant basketball coach, and maybe the AD?? I digress.

So the game starts and immediately Elizabeth starts taunting my cousin, which he seems to ignore, apparently rowdy fans are rowdy fans, no matter if they are related or not. She gave up pretty quick. He did a good job, he won over the little boys that sit in the front row, and we won the game, so that’s always a plus. (we decided that if there was only one water bottle left for the 3 referees, the kids would give it to him…because those same kids were the water boys. Plus, he gave his water boy a dollar for his hard work. And did you know that sometimes referees in basketball games are called umpires? Talk about confusing) Afterwards I only had to have one awkward conversation with an old high school classmate, while my sister visited with 2 or 3 ex-boyfriends. (Meanwhile her youngest decided to run away from me, but she came back, so I only had to chase her halfway around the gym. Gotta love the small high schools where everyone sort of watches out for everyone)

Another thing that really amused me during the game was this little boy…he was maybe 3 years old. He was wearing this lime green T-shirt. Which I thought odd, most of the little kids were wearing blue or white or a shirt that said their elementary school on it. So I first noticed him running along one of the ends of the gym in the first half. And then I noticed him running up the stairs next to us…on the opposite end of the gym. And then I realized, that for almost the entire game, he did laps around the gym. Across the gym behind one basket, through the cheerleaders, past the kids sitting in the front row, up the bleacher stairs, down the back hallway stairs, outside the doors behind the other end of the gym, in the door, up our stairs, across the length of the gym to the other end, down the stairs and start the whole process over again. I do have to say that I understand why he was wearing a lime green T-shirt…you could always spot him. After the game, he was doing cartwheels on the court as the older kids shot baskets around him.

All I have to say is, his poor mother. If he has that kind of energy every day…poor thing!!