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! 

The Lore of Ye Olde Cyber Monday

Gather round, children, if ye seek to know the true tale of how Cyber Monday came to be. Surely you have received missives from merchants hitherty thither, writ large in shouty caps. What of this Cyber Monday? And why this messaging of such urgency? Pray thee listen to the lore, for we will conjure the spirit of ye olden and golden days of the separation of our labors from home and hearth.

You see, our pocket robots were not always the tyrants you have known them to be! There was a time, beloveds, long before the metalsmiths made rings to debase your sleep debt, when your forebearers would venture home from their workbenches and be internet-less for entire stretches upon the Lord’s day. It may bemuse you, but I assure you, it was a splendid time to be alive. 

What’s that? How ever did we know how to cook? Why, we consulted the dusty, hardbound tomes full of recipes!

From whence did our intelligence come about hailing a carriage for hire, or to ply foodstuffs from hucksters who would deliver to our cottage door? And further, how did we navigate cobbled streets without so much as Mapquest directions from the scribe or block printer? Work emergencies? O’er week’s ending? It’s a mystery, fair ones, how we managed at all, even now….

And yet, it was our great delight to venture forth, after the ale and frivolity of Thanksgiving, to resume industry at our workbenches on Monday morn. We as the noble cobblers and scriveners and spurriers of our era, were verily eager to poach the High Speed Internet afforded by our proprietors and masters! Oh how those websites of the shoesmiths and milliners sparked and unfurled so fluidly, like the scrolls of the town criers! Caught in the world wide web’s thrall were we--simply mesmerized by the wares of the merchants! The skills of the online peddlers, what with their sterling promises that if we merely bought five pieces of crockery, we would receive one pot compliments of the potter. Imagine? To live so high on the hog. The expiry of those sales threatened action, post-haste, lest we tarry. 

Thus was Cyber Monday. 

What may escape ye, though, is the vernacular of “cyber.” For while it may seem an innocuous term, or even obsolete term by any stretch of your modern imagination, now, know this, Buckleshoe McGee: This word once carried a heft to it. It was an adjective seasoned with not only salt, but savory spices. Ay! It was even once a verb! Goodie Prynne and Reverend Dimmesdale were well-aquainted with its implications. The Googleman can illuminate you, should you crave to know more. 

Although ye may no longer observe this high holiday, I pray ye mark with gratitude the omnipresence of Lightning Fast Interwebs of which your generation benefits and brain rots in equal parts. I encourage your support of our robust economy, children. I pray ye acquire a host of trinkets and other novelty items that will catch your fancy, this and every Cyber Monday in this brave new world!!  

Big Drive-Thru Energy

What you need to know is that I’m a good-ish driver. Except when I’m stressed, which is 89% of the time. In a stress zone behind the wheel, I do things like chew up the insides of my mouth and sweat buckets and become cartoonishly startled when someone honks. I’ve amassed a number of speeding tickets (not proud) and totaled a car before (super not proud) and even drove a motorscooter into a garage door (bought someone a new one who is not me) but I’m trying to be a better, more steady, more circumspect driver. Then my oldest kid wants to show me a video, probably a TikTok that makes a subtle reference to a classic meme that I need explained to me, and said kid is doing so whilst riding passenger, and my number one parenting strategy is to become intrigued by the things that dazzle my children. I just should probably make exceptions to doing that when I’m, e.g. operating a moving vehicle. Ah! There’s the addendum. 

That addendum obviously eluded me sometime in July, which is why when we were exiting the Rockland Wendy’s (where we had just purchased a highly nutritious meal that totally did not include a Frosty that was masquerading as a meal replacement) it was so strange when we noticed a car pulling up the narrow exit lane in the opposite direction. 

Like what the heck, did this driver not know this was an exit only lane? 

We were about to crash into an oncoming car, when lo! I realized that because of my TikToking While Driving, I was actually driving through the Drive-Thru in the wrong direction. 

Not only was I blocking a whole stream of cars, but I had passed all signage and windows and other Giant Throbbing Clues that would have easily tipped me off that I was the bozo. 

As I tried to reverse on a curve, a feat that should not be attended by any old station wagon whipping amateur, my oldest child and I waved hello to the drive-thru cashier who had seen us advance in the wrong direction and now reverse in the right direction. His 15 ½ year-old face was one of bemusement. Apparently I was his first. 

We then passed a bright bay window of all the rest of the employees, whose collective age was 17. They had gathered to see what I hope was the highlight of their whole collective summer: a woman and her kid in a Subaru who apparently don’t know how drive-thrus work. YOU SAW IT HERE FIRST, FOLKS. I believe they were even grabbing their phones to document this seminal moment on TikTok. Full Circle! Also, we are no longer welcome at the Rockland Wendy’s.