Aging Gracefully

Powder Hounds!

Hmm...Not much of a greeting. It's the name of the restaurant up at Jiminy Peak, but it doesn't really work as the lead-in here. Let's see - Janneke, c'mere a minute. Can you us your particular genius to warp this into something I can use at the outset?

"Let's see," she replies. "First, I'll have to go several days without thinking of it. Then, I'll have to try to call it up from memory on the fly, sticking the particularly-shaped stick that is my vague notion of the place into the vat of information that makes up my mind, stirring it about, then drawing it out again and see what's gotten tangled in its branches. So let me go off on a conference. Call me long-about Day 3 and ask me about the restaurant."

Done. Ready?

"Yep. Here goes:

"'The Pound Dog'. Is that good?"

Not really, sweetie. Try again.

"Hmm...'The Quarter Hounder'?"

Nope.

"'Hounderbout'?"

'Fraid not.

"The 'Howdy, Pardner'?"

Bingo. Thanks, sweetie.

(Ahem.)

Howdy, pardner!

Big weekend at the Johnstadt household. Friday night, Q had a basketball game, which we all attended. The rubber match between the two Williamstown teams that make up half this little four-team league. Q, on the one hand, had a fabulous game, with lots of people coming up to him to commend him for his ball-handling skills. Twice, independently, friends remarked about how Q was the only one out there who seemed unafraid to use his off-hand. (I was going to say "his left hand", but Alex is left-handed.) He drove the lane just about whenever he wanted - he would stay at the top of the key and start one way, then the other, and when the defender over-committed, zing!, in he would dart to lay it up.

Note I did not say "in". He finished the night with no points, and his team lost for the first time this year.

He wasn't the only one. A few kids on his side were off - by the time the first team (which plays exactly half the game, always, regardless the situation, because Q's coach so totally rocks) left the floor halfway through the first quarter, they were down 10-0. And by the time the second team walked off at the end of the first, it was 15-0. Everybody was getting to the hoop, but nobody was scoring. Weird.

So Saturday afternoon, long about 1:00, when the kids were going a bit stir crazy in the house, I offered to take them to the gym, where they could run off some steam.

And practice some lay-ups.

The one-street "downtown" of Williamstown was jammed with cars, though, and I started to worry about whether we'd be able to get to a gym. Very often in these little college towns, they will have these orgies of athletics, where suddenly every varsity team from some college or other piles aboard buses and invades the burg, and there are seven different varsity sports being contested at the same time all over campus. Chartered buses were parked near the skating rink...It didn't look good. But we went in anyway, with our sneakers and balls in our big-ol' Target bag, and walked to Lasell Gym, the one where you can usually get a backboard.

Full. Two wrestling mats and several varsity teams. Crumbs.

Off the three of us trundled, through the little skyway that passes through the squash courts. Which were teeming with people who were intently watching a match below, clapping vigorously and re-crossing their legs.

(And by the way: Squash fans and players, in this very small sample I've observed, are the WASP-iest of the WASPy folk you ever see at this WASP-y college. They just all seemed to be particularly...what, I don't know - Thin, reserved, lanky, well-to-do, straight-haired; slightly and tastefully overpriveleged (bringing their dog (an impeccably groomed black Labrador) indoors, for example, to watch the match, with no fear of being asked to leave it outside), covered in J-Crew Catalogue-looking clothes that are actually of some make that I'm far too Midwestern to even know about...Whale belts, say. I didn't think to look, but I'd bet money there was more than one whale belt in there. (Which you can read about in a quick and informative article here.) It was actually a little creepy. I hustled my genetic-grab-bag, Midwestern-inflected children through and continued toward the main gym.)

So on we trundled - toward the pool, whence we could see lots of people going in and out of the observation deck. Swim meet fever. Hoo-boy...We sighed as we walked toward the pool, knowing that this same skyway also looks down into Chandler Gym, where we fully expected to see a basketball game.

Nope. Absolutely empty.

Two minutes later we were charging around in there like there was no tomorrow - T with her big blue Dodgeball-style ball, and Q with his basketball, probably overinflated. (I had just pulled it out of the athletic bin on the deck, and it's about 5 degrees out. So I had pumped it up, maybe a bit too much.)

Q shot around a while, with no direction, but then I told him I thought he was putting it up too late on layups. I challenged him to stop dribbling no later than the line demarcating the outermost edge of the second "stall" where players stand while waiting for a free throw to be shot. At first, he thought it was impossible - but then I worded it differently. "You've still got two steps. Stop dribbling before here, and take your two steps starting here." He tried it - and laughed out loud at how easy it suddenly was to make a lay-up.

Then he asked me to play him one-on-one.

I made him do ten such layups first.

And then T and I did some bounce passes and catching with her ball; then I used my watch to time them as they sprinted across the gym floor. And then we went to Brad and Betsy's.

Needed to borrow some Blu-Ray discs, you see, because I just bought a Blu-Ray player, and it appears to be a piece of crap. Won't play any Blu-Ray discs at all - not only the ones that were just released, either, which was the half-arsed excuse the woman on the phone gave me when she talked me through to the point where it became clear that, yes, I did so have the latest version of the software ("firmware", they call it) loaded onto the damn thing. Be sending that back soon.

Saturday night, Q went to a birthday sleepover, and T and Janneke and I went out to have dinner at the home of Don and Bridget, proprietors of Caretaker Farm. They just got back from 2 months in Chile, and we wanted to pick their brain about how it had gone. Although it turned into us telling them about our hopes and plans for our own year abroad. Which is a testament to their coolness - they are so interested in others, and so good at making you feel at home, that you wind up talking about yourself a lot. Or maybe I'm just a self-centered jerk.

"'Maybe'?"

That'll do, Janneke.

Back to the ranch, where Janneke and I watched Michael Clayton. Two big thumbs up. Very enjoyable film, and all the more evidence that the rhythm and lifestyle we've found for ourselves is really very well suited to the people we are. I want nothing to do with the sort of life they depict there...You just have to see it. George Clooney is the best - The guy has everything, but you just can't dislike him. He is so, good at what he does. Fabulous picture.

Snoozed, we did, until 7:30 or so, when T's antics woke us. Grabbed her and dragged her to our bed for some Sunday-mornin' hijinks, and then I went downstairs to run on the treadmill. It's cold out - I'm not going out there unless I have to. (Because I, as my friends in fourth grade would have told you, am a sissy. Only they wouldn't have said "sissy", because I was in fourth grade in 1979, not 1959.)

(Which absolutely freaks me out: When I was in fourth grade, it had only been twenty years since the days of Edsels and greased hair and drag races and sock-hops. Only twenty years! Do you know what I was doing twenty years ago? I was 21 years old! I was in college! Half of you were there! (Assuming someone other than my mother-in-law is reading this. Hi, Monique!) My God...! Tell me the existential gap between 1959 and 1979 isn't five times larger than the one between 2010 and 1990. I dare you.)

Anyway, I went to pick Q up from his playdate around 10:00, but the hosts invited him to continue the day on the ski slopes. Which would mean that T wouldn't go - so I had to take her up, just to make things even. Woe is me.

And despite it only being 18 degrees or so, it really wasn't bad at all. The wind was very slight, and the sun was bright. T and I got in three good runs, then met up with Q and his pals and collected him to take him home.

Where we had time to shower and change before heading out to Coyote Flaco for my birthday dinner. It was super - the kids had made me a card, Janneke had made me a cake...Fantastic. Simple, warm, heartfelt, joyful well-wishes from the three most important people on Earth. (Well, three of the four. Let's not forget about Mr. Clooney quite so soon.) I am a lucky man.

Couple of series of the Pro Bowl (Q wanted to watch it - I tried to talk him out of it, but if the argument was tennis, it was a straight-sets ass-whuppin'. "But, Q," I said, "it isn't much of a game. It's just an exhibition. Nobody really cares, and they don't play hard. Besides, everybody who's in the Superbowl isn't playing." "I know, but I've never seen it. Not once in my life." Game, set, match.), and then to bed. For the kids, anyway. Janneke then sat down to watch Masterpiece Theater (has there ever been one in which there is not a dance scene, filled with meaningful glances as men in high-waisted pants strut like roosters beside a marriageable teenager...?), and I donned my cape and mask and high boots for a night patrolling the skies.

Whoops - not supposed to say that out loud. You didn't hear it from me.

BANZAI!