Should I declare bankruptcy before or after my son’s AAU basketball season?

I recently registered my son for AAU basketball, which is exciting because I don’t have an NBA salary, and I’m told this is the best way to ensure my son will one day earn one. The registration fee was a kabillion dollars, which did not cover uniforms, gym rental, equipment, tournament participation, or the small palette of electrolyte drinks he requires for baseline hydration, but, hey! There’s an entrance fee for everything. 

First, though, I had to Venmo a stranger a quarter of a million dollars for my son to try out, which is a totally normal thing to pay for, since I wouldn’t expect anyone in an Adidas track suit to use their eyeballs for free, while hand-selecting the players that will optimize their roster, and finance their gas money to and from this insane tournament schedule that appears to take us well into Spring 2034. I then received an e-mail at midnight congratulating us on our assignment to the Suffolk Sonics, and letting us know that practice would begin the next day at 6 a.m.--location TBD. We were in!!

My son refers to basketball as his “main sport,” as if he were Bo Jackson and Nike might sponsor him for a cross-training sneaker with all of his other athletic pursuits. But really, my son spends his entire day dunking on me and air-balling tissues into the waste basket. Basketball is The Sport, so naturally, we cannot possibly just play a town intramural league for the love of the game. What? And risk being unserious? About his and our future!? 

The trouble with this private league, in addition to the moral dilemma of advancing an elitist athletic industrial complex, though, is that the practice schedule changes every 15 minutes. The WhatsApp group chat pings me all day: “Sorry for the late notice but we are changing venues tonight!!” This wouldn’t otherwise pose a problem (if I were in the NBA and therefore had a concierge-level limo service to shuttle my son across state lines to elite training facilities), but alas, I am a single parent with four jobs, so the fact that I was in the parking lot last night already when they changed the venue was--haha!--not my favorite part. I dare not express my displeasure, though, as the last time I asked in WhatsApp if the practice schedule was solidified for the week, my son said, “Bruh. Lowkey no one tryna catch strays in the group chat,” which I assume means LeBron James’s mom would never.

We’ve only had one tournament so far, for which I paid half a gajillion dollars to park and to enter the gym in order to watch the child I grew in my womb get body-checked by a swarm of men I can only assume the opposing team poached from a construction site the morning of the tournament. In other words, the perfect training grounds for my son to gro pro!! The only rub was that his coach wasn’t even there. (Apparently he was at a game for the other private league team he coaches?) So someone’s dad hopped in, and while he didn’t know any of the kid’s names, or any of the plays they had supposedly learned in practice, he was competent in scribbling on the portable whiteboard. You’d think a more specialized skillset would be required to mobilize this team to victory, but they pretty much just did whatever and won. 

It was exciting to see the team starting off the season with a dub. The next tournament is tomorrow but I’m told it’s not listed on the app we were told to download, but it’ll be announced on another app that is still in development. I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it to the next tournament, though. I need to check with my mortgage lender about refinancing my home so I can afford to attend. With any luck, I’ll see the coach at the next one, too!