©MaryMcgintyPhotography

©MaryMcGintyPhotography

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Jan 4, 2011

The life of a high school athlete


It hit me like a freight train or maybe more like a bullet between the eyes as I lay on my teenagers floor,  head first, waist deep under his bed at 5:00 am...AM people! I have completely lost my mind. I must of still been asleep as I crawled under TJ's bed to look for his gloves.
 A simple "mom, while I get ready (translation: fix my hair just so...) would you grab my glove from under my bed?" 
What seemed like a simple request was really a calculated trick
"I'll get her before she's had her coffee...hehehe"
"I may sleep on that bed, but I'm not stupid..."

I momentarily pause as I get on my knees as a wall of teenager stench hits me, I move one leg in side out dirty jeans, yesterday's damp towel, a few AXE soaked shirts just so I can get to the underside of the bed. Once down, I enter the abyss of dirty socks, food wrappers, cords...so many random cords, dust covered books, baseballs, a stuffed jaguar, pens, pencils, crumpled papers, sticky this and sticky that, dust balls the size of hamsters...the list goes on
What am I looking for?...Oh, batting gloves
As my right sinus starts to burn and my right eye tears up the freight train hits
Hell Fucking No!
 not sure if it's my voice or my therapists voice screaming back at me.
I bang my head trying to navigate backwards out of Satan's den.

 "TJ, are you kidding me, I can't find gloves in that Hell Hole"
"No mom my mitt, it's right here...sorry"

Guess what? It's high school baseball conditioning time..YAY
Every Tuesday and Thursday  from 5:30 - 7am. No joke
Why in the morning?
 Because we are still football conditioning Mon-Thur 2:45-4pm for NEXT YEARS FALL FOOTBALL SEASON! 
Duh! Makes perfect sense

Driving down Main street at 5:20 am in the dark frozen 10 degree morning, I see the random car add to what looks like a ghost town. By the time we reach Glenbard East HS there is a line of cars dropping of their future stars. We all nod at each other with the implied  "Are we out of our minds?"  That same line of cars heads back to Main street...some head south, me and my group head north...slowly losing a car every couple of blocks until I'm back where I started...that lone car driving down Main street at 5:20 am in the dark frozen 10 degree morning...except it is 5:35 am 


So I write this at 6am while the house is still asleep, coffee next to me. Just an fyi...my right sinus is still burning as I wipe a tear from my eye...not the nostalgic tear
The tear of an irritated sinus clogged with teenager dust balls.

The life of a high school athlete should read "The life of a parent of a high school athlete"


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

To borrow a line from a country song.... believe it or not... You're Gonna Miss This! How I do remember and sadly miss those days. We are now empty nesters so it's a lot more quiet now.

Stopping by from Mama Kat's.