Basketball

We hate the Lakers.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Their terrible color combination. That they were so mean to the Sixers in that first finals we ever watched. Because no group of professional athletes should have such a poor free-throw percentage. That they seem so culturally and athletically dominant. (I also hate the Cowboys. If I managed to care about baseball, I might even dislike the Yankees, though I'm not sure of that, entirely.) Anyway. We hate the Lakers. A lot.

I started this. I saw it was the conference finals, and somehow now we've got five hours of ball a night on the TiVo, which is seriously screwing with my three-week X-Files backlog. (It's season 6. That is, it's the shippiest season until season 7. And then season 8, which wins the shippy awards because, you know, they have a baby.) I just had to watch three whole episodes on fast forward (stopping only for "Dear Diary, today my heart leapt" and "I lack your feminine wiles" and assorted other goodness) and delete this week's Top Chef (which reruns three times in the next 24 hours, so I'm not anxious) in order to see the Lakers not win tonight. WHICH WILL HAPPEN. BECAUSE WE HATE THE LAKERS.

Anyway, it's been a wonderful week of basketball. Every evening, my wife will come over to the couch, and we'll sit curled up under a blanket, her leaning against me, both of us holding onto Willa, who kicks along happily. Kate feels her all the time; I've felt her, but I get distracted by Kate's pulse, which is close to the surface along her belly. I explain to Willa what I know about basketball, all of which was learned from watching the game. I'm still not certain what the rules are for various fouls, in particular why it's not a foul every time someone gets shoved around. (I think I came up with a good moral lesson in the structure of fouls: "Every time you foul somebody, it's wrong. But sometimes, you do it anyway, because it'll make something else better. Still, you have to take your punishment, because it's still a wrong thing.") We've decided we need to actually know the rules of the game before she comes out, so this time next year, when she's sitting on my lap for real, I can explain it to her. And she'll sit there, in her tiny little New York Liberty shirt, and learn to hate the Lakers. Because, really, she should.