You know you are a grown-up when the babies are six feet tall

Last week we went to watch Samantha, a young woman from our hometown, play basketball in the 6A High School State Championship games. We were excited to hear she was coming. Her parents are good friends of ours from way back. Her dad and I, in fact, spent many days playing together when we were still in gradeschool.

I have this picture in my head of the first time I met Samantha. If it’s a real photograph it must be in my mom’s books because I’ve searched through mine and I can’t find it. Samantha is just a tiny little thing – a baby, maybe three or four weeks old. John (her father) and Bill (a friend) and I are hovering over her, watching her like she is the most amazing thing any of us has ever seen.

John and Bill were country kids like me. Our houses were all within a mile-or-so of each other. Our moms often met for morning tea in the summertime and we rode the same bus to school every day from kindergarten until about ninth grade when we all started driving.

Anyway, I was at the basketball game and there were cheerleaders chanting the same cheers I remember from my school years. There was the Dodge City band playing many of the same songs. The Demons were on the court. It was kind of a trip through time, in a way. I kept fading into memories, all the times I was a spectator at ball games as a kid in high school, and then I’d suddenly become aware of the things that were out of place. My son was sitting next to me. Those people, John’s parents, were GRANDparents and that six-foot tall girl on the basketball court was that tiny baby only moments ago.

John and I, we must seem to Samantha the kind of adults his parents and my parents seemed to us back then. It’s one of those thoughts that kind of makes my head feel a little woozy. I remember being a kid longing to grow up. I’m just not sure when I actually got here.