On happy thoughts, basketball, and Lil Jon…

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Sometimes, I get in these weirdly benevolent moods as I drive home from work. I start listening to Mr. John Mayer, reflecting on life and thinking things like, “You know, Amy, being a positive person isn’t that hard. You’ve been through enough in the past few years to know that life always pans out, so why not make the most of things?” I start plotting my workout schedule and how nice I’m going to be to everyone and how I’m just going to be less stressy about time and life and plans and start generally feeling good about myself.

And then life LAUGHS OUT LOUD.

On Friday, Andrew and I had plans to go to the Sacramento Kings game with a high school friend of Andrew’s. It’s rare that I get to meet any of Andrew’s old friends, and I generally get really excited to meet people from his past because he lives so far from home—it’s really fun to get to see the “other” side of Andrew.

I think I need to start this story with a word of caution: DO NOT LET BOYS MAKE PLANS. Just…don’t. When girls meet up, there are pre-arranged times, meeting places and careful organization. When boys meet up, it tends to be sort of willy-nilly “we’ll text you when we’re close and just figure it out from there.” Nonetheless, after circling the arena and spending time parking outside of it in order to share a parking pass and many, many, many phone calls later, we arrived to the game 15 minutes late.

Our seats were up high, and apparently, my body is finding new things to worry about on the regular, because the heights were DIZZYING to me. Climbing the stairs literally made me feel woozy, and for the first five minutes we were in our seats, I took deep breaths and just tried to CALM DOWN from the DRIVING around and the CLIMBING and AAAHHHHH.

So, I am not quite sure what sort of teenager magnet I have in me. I spend my days with middle schoolers, which I really enjoy, but suffice it to say that on the weekends, I try to avoid adolescents. But, lo and behold, we were seated in front of a group of middle school students. Throughout the game, I was treated to all of the LOLZ and DRAMZ of middle schoolers, including loud discussions about Twilight, how skinny is *too* skinny for your skinny jeans and loud random declarations of things like, “If I were the towel boy, I would totally steal the ball and try and shoot a basket like, every time I was on the court!” followed by raucous laughter.

It was riveting.

Thankfully, there was much people watching to be had. To me, the most impressively weird thing about basketball games and other sporting events is the dedication people show towards getting free stuff. There was a TEE SHIRT TOSS! and people were up on their feet, jumping and flailing about as if they could win a million dollars by being ridiculous. All sense of pride and dignity seems to switch off automatically for some people once they hear the word FREE. I, for one, will never, ever be caught on a Jumbo Tron shaking my money maker for a free t-shirt or basketball antenna ornament. But, others do not share my self-consciousness, therefore, I am endlessly entertained.

Perhaps the worst part of this extravaganza was the small child seated behind us. Okay, okay—it’s a basketball game and there is yelling and cheering and excitement. I GET IT. But, parents, seriously!? Allowing your child to shriek at the top of her lungs for no reason every 15 seconds isn’t cheering—it’s annoying. Not only did this little angel shriek, she also did her best Lil Jon impression, yelling, “Yeeeahhhh, bay-bay!” in between ear-piercing screeches. I did my Passive Aggressive duty and shot a few dirty looks back in her general direction, but her parents were too oblivious and wrapped up in their beer. I was not amused, so I found myself using “The Secret” to get the child to shut up, thinking things like, “Thank you for the small child losing her voice” and “I am imagining a world where that child’s larynx no longer exists.”

Sadly, it didn’t work, and even more sadly, my Life Changing Commitment To Only Positive Thinking was not lasting. In fact, I found myself cursing the entire evening, and generally wishing that I was at home, in my sweats and watching the game something good on TV.

Still, at the end of the night, after the Kings won and we were all seated around a table in Mel’s Diner, and the boys were reminiscing about high school days spent launching water balloons and pulling other ridiculous pranks, and I got to watch Andrew laugh and smile and think about a life long before he and I existed, I realized that there was nowhere else I’d rather be. Not even little kids and brooding teens and dizzying heights could have kept me from watching my boy look so happy.