Remember when I told you that we're all motivated by something? Well, for Jake it's money.
You got it.
Cold hard cash.
And you already know that Big Daddy and I will stoop low enough to "pay" our children to do certain things. You're thinking, "Well, of course, like an allowance!"
NO!
Like ... pay them to ... say ... SWING THE BAT IN A BASEBALL GAME.
That's right.
Jake is small. A tiny little thing for his age. And he has discovered that when he's up to bat in his baseball games, he doesn't have to swing. He'll get walked and on base almost every time. The reason is because he's hard to pitch to because he's so small. Not much of a strike zone and the pitcher (being 10 years old) has to adjust pitching from regular sized kids to a small kid ... and it usually takes a few times. At least four. And waa-laa, Jake finds himself on first base, anxious to steal second.
Well, we don't want him to play the game that way. If a good pitch comes his way, we want him to swing. The coaches, the parents and other teammates are always yelling for him to SWING THE BAT. But, when he does, he sometimes hits the ball. And it dribbles to the pitcher and he's thrown out. He hates that. Being walked is a better deal for him. But we want him to SWING!
Being the stubborn ass that he is, he doesn't.
Or I should say didn't. Until we started offering up some moola in exchange for a swing of the bat here and there.
Horrible, aren't we?
Anyway, Jake made a few bucks this weekend at the tournament and his team finished in 4th place. Why they give trophies for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, AND 4th place, I don't know? I thought it should only be 1st, 2nd and 3rd ... but that wasn't the case, so Jake climbed into the Suburban late Sunday afternoon with a trophy in hand, and he was thrilled to say the least. I can't even begin to tell you how excited and happy he was.
Somewhere along the 2 hour ride home, he said, "With all the money I made swinging the bat this weekend, I'm going to buy a polisher. That way I can polish my trophy every single day. I love it."
Yeah, okay! At first I was dumb founded. This didn't sound like my kid. Did we accidentally take someone else home from the ball game?
Then, after studying his pretty blue eyes and big ol' buck teeth, I realized, this is indeed Jake. At that point, I was so happy this dorky little sunburned 10 year old was mine, he was growing up and wanting to take care of the things he earned and held close to his heart. However, that was almost 4 days ago, and he still hasn't even brought the damn thing in the house yet.
Yeah, that's more like the Jake I know.
