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 things they found when they were moving

Everyone always hails the purge when you move, the commendable, enviable ridding of Excess Stuff that one accumulates from living for too long in a particular place. We could all Marie Kondo our way through our domiciles on a weekly basis but sometimes you still open a door and lo! The entire Oriental Trading catalogue appears to have been deposited, in glow-in-the-dark form, where your cookie cutters should be. I do not exaggerate that the moving out of our Tennessee rental home was a six-month liquidation of crap. I don't know if my kids are just at that fringe age where they are still clinging to ye toys of olde whilst embracing the accoutrements of Tomorrowland but they were categorically unhelpful when it came to parting with any of their possessions. I was all, "I put this in the basement for a whole year and you never asked about it once," and they were all, "Wait, Mom, that's my favorite band-aid of all time!" So we sent them to my parents' house for two weeks. Seriously. This was hard but necessary. Separate, stop, collaborate and listen. We sent them away and made 23824390234 trips to the donation bin at Goodwill and finally we only had one truckload of stuff to move into our new Boston apartment and we're here. Yay. Somehow still unpacking boxes of stuff. Weird.

In the wake of this move, here are some interesting artifacts discovered:

Exhibit A: Charlie Sunshine Lotion - The lotion itself is starting to sort of ferment but you can open the tube and catch a whiff of Summer 1999. The sense memory is fierce with this one. One sniff and I am transported to  early college years and all of the homes of my high school friends who were still working high schooly jobs for one last summer. Lifeguarding and nannying and working at the mall and whatnot. This perfume smells of being young and mostly dumb and patently irresponsible and yet I always had enough money to fill my Honda Civic's gas tank. So basically this lotion reminds me of a time and a metabolism I will never get back.

Exhibit B: Costco Calling Card - This item is not only completely obsolete but is incredibly sentimental. This was The Calling Card that made possible the 1.5 year long-distance relationship between Loverpants and myself. Any time one of us would get paid, we'd load a hot $20 onto that ticket. For a time, Loverpants had the phone number and code memorized. It's a hell of a thing to be able to look at a 2 x 3 sheet of plastic and think, you were indispensable. Upon you were all anecdotes about his grad school endeavors and my undergraduate misadventures and all the sighing and crying in between. I'll never know how much money we logged onto that calling card, talking about everything from the ridiculous to the sublime, but kids today will never understand why one was necessary and this makes us Betty and Barney Rubbles: The Long-Distance Courtship

Exhibit C: 8th Grade Math Trophy - It may not have had my name on it (because I was part of a team! A team of mathletes!) but kids, there is now proof. Mama was once smart enough to do math and get a trophy for it. Nevermind that I was 12. Nevermind that it was on a Saturday and everyone else who could add and subtract was probably playing football or watching VH-1 Pop-Up Video. Mama got herself some heavy metal for her mad math skillz. I took a picture of it so it'd last longer, yep I sure did, Pee Wee Herman.