Pick Your Battles

Many of you know how excited I am that my girlie girls are playing tennis, the world's greatest sport! I first introduced them to it while my dad was visiting, convenienty planned as I knew he would have much more patience with them than I would. It worked, after a couple afternoons of playing volley in the driveway a.k.a. making grandpa chase the ball down the street they were hooked.
A couple weeks later while visiting my mom in Florida we took their new rackets to the courts. A net was something foreign to them and once again with 2 sleeves of balls we spent 99 % of the time retrieving the damn balls. The senior citizen playing next to us apparently felt our pain and came to our rescue with some more balls and a kid foam practice ball. Even with the extra balls I was still getting nervous, there wasn't enough contact being made. The lesson was going slow with our constant running to get more balls. I knew at that moment that I was risking losing my athletes to a lifetime of art or drama. I had to act fast!
Logann who strangely thinks like me, bored and frustrated then asked if I would buy her a ball hopper. Apparently she had eyed one at dicks while we were buying the rackets. My immediate thought was "seriously kid who gets a ball hopper after playing twice!" I wasn't sure I could commit to a $100 investment, these girls lose interest in everything fast. Plus would I be creating a spoiled,lazy player? Shouldn't she learn to deal with chasing balls as we all did? But on second thought what if the ball hopper kept her interest and gave us the opportunity to spend more time hitting. This ball hopper could lead to a college scholarship or at least just someone for me to hit with in a few years.
So I decided as I always do on a nights sleep that the ball hopper was a brilliant idea. We promptly ordered it up along with 48 balls. There was one condition though, if I ordered the hopper the girls had to hit 100 balls a day." Sure, sure of course Mom" anything to get what they want.
I must say when it arrived it felt like xmas for all of us. Amazingly I quickly assembled the thing without any cursing and we planned our first practice for the next afternoon. In the morning Logann was so excited by the hopper that she dragged it out of the garage and asked to play before school. "Not now" I told her, "put it back." An hour later as I was pulling my car out of the garage I heard an awful crunching noise and looked in the rearview mirror to see 48 balls rolling down the driveway and into the road. I was furious and screamed at Logann to go retrieve the balls. That was quite a sight I must say the two of us crazily chasing all those balls!
Logann was speechless for awhile, I could tell by her face that she was as bummed as I was by the complete crushing of the hopper. On the way to school I lectured her about doing what she was told.
"I did Mom, I put it away."
"Logann you don't put things behind cars"
"Well I remember you told me a story once that when you were six you put your bike behind your grandpa's car and he ran it over."
She was right I had done the same dumb thing at her age. Logann always trying to prove her innocence (not sure where she got that from) added
"Well its half your fault too Mom, don't you know when you back up you're suppose to look to see whats behind you"
I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and remembered the saying "pick your battles". I let it go. And like my grandpa I bought her another one.
We have a new hopper now and unfortunately because its been 98 degrees everyday it is currently housing a bunch of stuffed animals as part of some game the girls made up. I think Logann is afraid to bring it out to the garage. Hopefullly it'll see some action soon.
Tennis anyone?