2007, New Jersey

By Joel Schwartzberg

“She’s not gonna make it,” my 7-year-old son Evan announces recently about an American Idol candidate massacring a ballad. “Her singing is too dramatic.”

“Way over the top,” I agree.

Evan’s eyes fix on the screen. He’s immune to the ingénue’s ferocious good looks and how far that might take her, and for this I’m thankful. He has the rest of his natural life to be distracted by pretty women.

Evan and I sit closely, actually leaning on each other. One of my tired hands is deep in a bowl of popcorn, and the other is on the remote control; one of his tiny hands is also in the popcorn, and the other is resting lightly on my knee. Pathetic as it may be to some, this is our first extended experience in spectator sporting.

While many 7-year-olds are already die-hard baseball fans or soccerheads, Evan’s never shown an interest in organized sports. When he sat down with me to watch two minutes of the Super Bowl last January, it was difficult to explain how a game with so many dull pauses made for exciting television.

Undaunted, I took him to karate class twice, and while he loved the loose gi I ordered from eBay, he never clicked with the beefy sensei who insisted that crying kids “shake it off.”

Instead of physically radiating on a ball field or playground, Evan dives into graphic novels, immerses himself in intricate computer games, and runs circles around me in terms of his thoughtful expression. His friends love him for all of the above, but inside, I worry about his vulnerability in a very competitive world. Somewhere down the road, my son will face his own Simon Cowell, and I’d like him to be prepared.

“Teddy’s very physical,” Evan acknowledges about his best friend by virtue of geography, the kind of kid who can ride a bike at breakneck speed down a short driveway and brake to an impossibly sudden stop inches from a dog’s sleeping head. “But we’re all good at something. It doesn’t always have to be the same thing.”

My own dad was a top squash player in his college days. I know this because I used his tarnished trophy bowl to corral my pocket detritus and spare change when I lived at home. But the lifelong schoolteacher, known during coaching stints as “Howie Basketball,” kept his athlete’s genes to himself. My brother and I were the last kids on the block to ride bikes, last in camp to float comfortably in water, and last to cross the finish line in the few local races my Dad optimistically signed us up for.

While reasonably fit, I still can’t dribble a ball without looking down, or swing determinedly at a softball in a way that won’t embarrass me or tear a ligament. Instead, my brother and I fell into competitive speech and debate in the sixth grade, and stuck with it through high school.

My dad adjusted. On tournament days, he’d wake us up in the dark morning so we could catch waiting yellow buses in the school parking lot. As our buses returned late that night, I’d see our small red car sitting in the lot, its interior dome light illuminated so my dad could grade papers while he waited.

I’d tumble into the vinyl back seat, pulling at my short tie as I recounted the day’s triumphs and defeats. If my dad ever regretted that he’d never sit in metal bleachers watching me make game-winning foul shots, I never knew it.

Once, I cleaned the dead leaves and muddy water from the toy basketball post in our driveway, and pumped up a kid-size basketball with Lebron James’ signature on it. I practiced feeding the ball to Evan, who would then valiantly attempt slam dunks into the low hoop.

Evan missed most of his dunks, but when they occasionally bounce-bounce-bounced in, we both yelped and jumped with raw elation, hugging each other like NCAA victors. It wasn’t pretty, but it was good.

When Idol ends for the night, Evan pops his favorite Lego Star Wars game into the computer and explains to his old man the intricate ways of the Jedi, as if conveying a deep secret. As he slices up droids, saves comrades, and collects hundreds of little gold coins, I realize that he’s as engrossed and ambitious as any devoted fan could be about anything. Even better, he’s rooting for himself.

“What are you saving your coins for?” I ask, impressed.

“Invincibility, naturally,” he says.

“Naturally,” I reply, wishing him as much invincibility as he can afford, as if he ever needed it at all.

Joel Schwartzberg is an award-winning freelance writer and also a senior producer of new media for the news magazine Now on PBS. The father of three, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey, and can be reached at joelscorp@gmail.com.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 | Email This Post

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