Adventures in Parenting

Jared Frey is Mitchell's best friend. He lives around the corner from us. Brian and I consider ourselves fortunate because Jared is a great kid and comes from a good family. Jared is also a Mormon. That means that many of his activities are centered around his church. Mitchell belongs to the Boy Scouts through Jared's church.

The Scouts meet every other Tuesday. The balance of Tuesdays are for "Young Men's, Young Women's" nights. On these nights adolescents have some organized social activity together. For example they might go bowling. They go caroling at Christmas time. It is really a nice way for the sexes to mingle in a chaperoned environment. Again, Brian and I consider ourselves very fortunate. The Frey's take Mitch with them every Tuesday.

Saturdays over the winter, the kids play in a basketball league. Mitchell has not been available to play in this league. (See my previous blog, "Busy Boy".) However, attending the Mormon church 3 times over the last three months, qualified him to play in the tournament. It was a six man team without him so I understand the coach wanting him. Mitchell loves basketball and if they would have him, we did need to consider letting him play.

The tournament was scheduled for Saturday, March 8th. This also happened to be the day of the last Demon Deacon basketball game. Wake basketball is one of our most valued family activities. We have season tickets. When Mitch asked me if he could go to the Mormon tournament instead, my knee-jerk response was to say no. I told him we could talk it over with his dad, but I was pretty sure Brian would feel the same way. He did.

Mitchell, ever persistent, said the tournament was early in the morning. He and Jared thought they would be back by 11 AM which would give us time to get to the noontime tip off. Mitch and I would pick up Jared at 7:55 AM so they could catch a ride with the coach at 8 from the local Hollywood Video lot.

7:25 AM the phone rang off the hook. Jared's mom, Nancy, was calling. Pickup time was at 7:30 AM. Mitch had slept through his alarm. I told Nancy I would be there for Jared as soon as Mitch was dressed. She wanted to take them because she needed to get money from the ATM for her kids to buy lunch. Excuse me? Lunch? The boys told us that they would be back by 11. Nancy asked Jared who I heard in the background demure that he did not know when they would be done.

I rushed Mitchell to dress while informing him that I would be coming to get him by 11 AM so we could get to the Wake game. I told him to ask Nancy to call with the location of the tournament. She said it was at Surry Community College. I plugged that into Yahoo to discover that Surry Community College has three campuses. Mitch called from the main campus in Dobson. I plugged this into Yahoo maps. It was 50 minutes away. I informed Dr. Tague that we had to leave for Surry by 10 AM.

"I'm going?" "Yes. How else will we get back in time for the game?"

Dobson is in the mountains and actually a very nice ride. We gabbed and joked around while sipping coffee and nibbling breakfast bars. It turned out to be a very pleasant morning if not the lazy one we originally envisioned. We arrived just around 11.

We found Mitch to learn that they had won their first game and would be playing their next game shortly. Realizing as his parents it might be a good idea to support our boy, we agreed to hang around to watch. We could still make it for the second half of the Wake game.

We did take both Mitch and Jared to task for giving us a line about getting back to Winston by 11. "It was a prediction!" They were informed that we would not be accepting "predictions" in the future. Just the facts, Jack!

Mitch was seventh on a seven man team. Neither he nor Jared are in top physical condition. Their friend, Joseph, is no Olympian either. How good could they be? Mitch said it would be fine if he left before the third and final game which would just be a consolation game.

We had not seen the other boys on Mitchell's team. They were all older and athletes. They played hard and won. Mitch had a basket and a couple of good plays that forced turnovers. It was exciting. As we began to realize they were going to win again, we discussed what was the right thing to do. We were conflicted. It was the last Wake game of the season and against NC State. However, Mitch was on a winning team. He was getting a morning full of exercise. He was making memories with his best friend.




I suggested that we wait until this game was over and see what Mitchell wanted to do. To our surprise he wanted to leave for Wake. It was alright with his team and his coach. They were sure they would lose to the next team who apparently dominates this tourney every year. We thanked the coach. Okay... away we went.

Fifty minutes later we pulled into the parking lot and raced for the Coliseum. We ran through the NY Pizza vendor grabbing slices for lunch. We managed to make it to our seats for the last 8:40 minutes of the game.

Wake was ahead and stayed there until the end. It was exciting and well worth the drive to have Mitchell with us. We stood together at the end singing the Wake Forest University song as a family. That is our tradition.


It was a day well spent. We just wanted to be together and that is how it turned out. We did tell Mitch that we realize more and more often he will want to go off with his friends instead of being with us. We told him we would do our best to understand.

We will try our best as we go through the painful process of encouraging him to spread his wings and become independent. Conflicted as we feel, that is our job... to teach him to stand on his own, to go out into the world. He will be 13 in two months time. Don't anybody blink.