IT'S FLOWER FRIDAY

Yeah, I know it's Flower Friday but there's only snow snakes around here in the winter.....so BASKETBALL it is.  The 4th grade girls put on an exhibition between halves of the high school girl's basketball game.  It's so much fun watching them try to emulate their high school counterparts.
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They're so small and the basket is so high they have to reach all the way down to their knees to get enough motion to get the ball high enough to go through the net. And they do spend a lot of time fighting for control of the ball. It's like a Pacheco machine with legs.
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I see them again a few years later and IT'S AMAZING how much eye/hand coordination develops in that time frame. Grade school teachers, especially in a small system like ours, get to see the development every day.  At the high school level, they come in pretty well coordinated but intellectually lacking. It's in the intellect department that high school teachers get to see the most development over time. For you non-teachers.......you don't know what you're missing. It's so much fun and it gives us hope for the future.
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I suppose parents get to see the entire growth of their children from physical coordination to intellectual maturity...if they're paying attention. That's not a given as it appears that, in many cases, the TV or the iPhone have been given the responsibility for raising the kids. It's not always mom and dad's fault as both are likely to be working in order to afford all the "things" that kids need.
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Speaking of basketball, when I shoot a game, all I see is dollar signs running up and down the court. Remember good old black high top tennis shoes for $3.99?  Joe Lapchick specials back in the 50s and 60s?  NOW it costs hundreds of dollars for a decent pair of basketball shoes and at the rate the kids grow that might mean more than one pair a season.  Now imagine having 2 or 3 kids in high school, all of them being 3-sport athletes and all of them needing 2 or more pair of shoes for each sport at a hundred or more dollars each every year.  No wonder both parents have to work full time just to keep the kinds in shoes and to have food on the table.  That is why I never charge any parent for any photo I may make of their kid.  The last thing they need is another bill to pay. Today's parents and kids are truly amazing. I see kids at school before classes start doing athletic practice or jazz band practice; they spend the whole day at their studies; more athletic practice after school; then home for supper and back to school for play practice in the evening. And still they manage to achieve good grades and do extraordinary things in extracurricular activities.  I don't know how they manage to get it all done.
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This has been quite a journey...from 4th grade basketball to cost of shoes to raising kids. I'll stop now before it gets too complicated.
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BEST IN LARGE.