My kids are slowly creeping up on an age where they should probably engage in some extra curricular activities.  The only problem is is that I don’t want to watch them engage in said activities because from what I can tell these are mostly on Saturday mornings which I have reserved for sleeping in, watching my kids watch cartoons, and eating doughnuts.  The primary activity that seems to be the default go to is youth soccer.  One of my problems with soccer is that it sucks balls to watch even when professional athletes who are being paid millions of dollars play it, there’s no way it isn’t horrible to watch when five year olds are engaged in such a uneventful sport as soccer.  Not only does my high level of intelligence and insight tell me youth soccer is god awful, I also had a brief career as a referee for youth soccer when I was in college.  I knew very little about actual soccer rules,  but it didn’t really matter because youth soccer isn’t really about rules, it’s about trying to keep the kids from attracting to the soccer ball as if they were frat guys who stumbled on a hot chick mere drinks away from passing out.  That being said and despite my lack of knowledge of the so called “rules” of soccer, I did have one thing going for me, I was the one who kept time.  I had a stop watch and the halves were suppose to be 12 minutes, by the end of the day they were 7 or 8 minutes.  Some of the astute parents may have noticed, but they were probably greatful,  I’m sure they  wanted to watch college football just as much as I did.

I have had people tell me soccer isn’t that bad, it may not be that bad but is it as good as sleeping in? Watching your kids watch cartoons?  Or eating doughnuts?  Of course it isn’t and I’m not trading any of those things in right now so that I can be forced into attending a youth soccer game, plus I’m sure there is a practice or two during the week that I would have to drag my kids to as well. (This is not an endorsement of football, football is just as boring as soccer with three times more injuries, most of them being catastrophic in nature) I’m not caving into the peer pressure of forcing my kids into playing a sport that they could give two shits about and that in all honesty, I hope they never play.  The crazy thing is, and I don’t know how this happened, but my oldest, Tod, all of a sudden decided he wanted to take karate classes.  I had hoped he was like his mom in the fact that she gets an idea in her head, is diligent about pursuing it for maybe 48 to 72 hours and then completely forgets about it, I would like to attribute it to her ADHD but who really knows what the exact cause of it is, it may have something to do with the fact that she has a vagina, I have a sneaking suspicion a lot of women are like this.  On that note, I’m sure she has had the idea of replacing me pop into her head but at some point realized it would take too much work and follow through to pull off, instead she decided to up the value of my life insurance policy.

I am digressing somewhat from where this was going, so bare with me since it’s been a while since I have blogged.  Shirley has had a number of ideas that have struck me as compulsive and not very well thought out.  One in particular was her desire to buy a camper.  I hate camping even more than I hate soccer so I played along and went to see some campers at a few places that sold campers, I even pulled a few used ones up on Craig’s list and showed her them just to keep the ruse going that I was as interested in a camper as she was.  Sure enough, a week went by and the camper idea fell by the way side like many of her other ideas had.

Unfortunately, her trips to Costco don’t allow me to implement this type of strategy in limiting her purchases.  Her latest fiasco occurred when I was golfing on a Saturday morning.  I came back and we had a brand new blender.  Here’s what happens with brand new blenders similar to what happens with tread mills and Nintendo Wii, they get used for a week and then the next thing you know they are being sold at your garage sale.  Normally I don’t even bother to ask how much something costs, but this blender appeared to be the Cadillac Esacalade of blenders so I had to at least inquire.  (the most I have ever spent on a blender is $30). As I inquired, Shirley indicated that it was probably as much as my golf all summer had cost, immediately I thought to myself “holy shit!” and then realized that my wife had no idea how much I actually golf and what the total sum of those greens fees would be, but I was still a bit alarmed.  She ended up spilling the beans and told me the blender was $500, my reaction was as if I had missed a three foot putt that would have won me the Masters, I was quite livid.  Here is what I don’t understand, how can a watch be thousands of dollars and how can a blender be $500? They do one thing, tell time and blend.  Fortunately I was somewhat calm in my approach to explaining how absolutely ridiculous spending $500 on a blender was.  As Tod and Ted watched on drinking their freshly blended smoothies, Shirley agreed to return the blender.

As with Shirley’s typically unsound wants and desires, I thought I could put off Tod’s request to attend karate by prolonging my search for the perfect karate class.  However, he kept bugging me on a weekly basis about going to karate.  I finally caved and found a karate class that received rave reviews on Google.  We arrived about two minutes before the scheduled 5:30 class, which was a gold star for us, and I signed the paper work to get Tod started.  Unfortunately the class was geared more for older kids and Aiden appeared to be the youngest enrolled by at least a year.  The instructor lined them up and had them do some rudimentary stretching which Aiden was struggling to accomplish.  Bad sign?  Hell yes, but what was even worse was when they got to jumping jacks.  He resembled an epileptic gold fish who had been spilled on the bathroom floor on the way to being flushed down the toilet.  I’m pretty sure at that point the instructor thought to himself as did I “this kid is in way over his head”.  After the failed attempt at jumping jacks the instructor paired the kids off and they began to do some karate moves.  The problem here was that most of the moves required the participants to do two things at once, the only activities Tod is capable of doing in conjunction with one another is eating and watching television.  He was on the struggle bus from the get go but was a good sport about it and gave it his all never feeling as self conscious as he should have.

One thing I did fail to mention was that all the other kids had their black karate robes on and Aiden was wearing jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt.  This was my bad, I could have at least brought along a pair of weenie benders for him to wear so he didn’t look entirely out of the ordinary.  (a karate robe is part of the deal if you sign up for three months of classes, I’m tempted to just buy him a karate robe on line and forego the classes). Initially he was quite concerned about not having his robe which is truly remarkable that kids that age realize when they are different and are actually that self conscious about it.  Ultimately, the karate maneuvers were completed and the final exercise was a team race where the kids were split up in two different teams.  Each team had to race to the end of the room and around a karate punching dummy with a bean bag balanced on their head.  Aiden’s team got out to a spectacular start but were severely bogged down when he came up and trudged his way around the dummy.  Fortunately for him there were some other inept kids  on his team and the loss could not solely be attributed to him.  The second event in the race involved a similar goal but instead of running they had to do high leg kicks the entire way.  This was even more of a struggle for Aiden but his team somehow managed to barely come out on top so his ineptitude was overlooked by his teammates but not by his dad.

As I was shuffling out of the class the instructor caught my attention.  I was worried he was going to try to talk me into bringing Tod back for another round, but I hadn’t given him enough credit.  Instead he told me about a Monday or Wednesday class for Young Dragons that is geared towards 3 to 5 year olds where Tod can work on his motor skills and core muscle development, as well as probably get beat up by his three year old brother since he can also be enrolled in the class.  When I told Aiden the news of a different class his response was “do I get to wear a robe?”  I answered in the affirmative and he asked me at least a half dozen more times on the way home about the robe.  While watching 3 to 5 year olds engage in karate exercises isn’t my ideal way to spend a Monday after work I still have sleeping in, watching my kids watch cartoons, and doughnuts to look forward to.  I love my Saturday mornings.