The Cup

I don't write very many stories about Andy and Sarah because they are older and have bigger issues, even at five and eight, that they may not want me sharing with the world.  Sometimes I want to write them just for posterity, but I don't.  Since Amanda's antics are more cute than embarrassing at this age, it's easier to focus on her.  Yesterday, however, something happened that I have to tell.

Andy joined a baseball team this spring (yes, in Texas they start baseball in February) for the first time in two years.  He got kind of sick of it before and we didn't push, only saying that he had to play one team sport a season but not mandating which one.  We never wanted the kid to get burnt out, but we did want him to learn to work with others and get some exercise other than working his thumbs on the video game controllers.

We thought he was done with baseball for good, but in the last six months he has gotten a lot more interested in it and decided to try again.  He was really excited to start the season, especially since now he is old enough to play kid pitch instead of coach pitch.  He went to a couple of practices and after one boy had an unfortunately incident the coach sent out a mandate that all the boys had to wear a cup to all games and practices.  Fair enough.

I went and bought it, but told Charlie it was up to him to show Andy how to use it.  Except we got really busy moving rooms this weekend and Charlie and Andy didn't know where I put it and never got around to it.  So, yesterday Andy had practice and he had to wear his cup.  Not that it's rocket science, but since I have never worn one myself I didn't feel that comfortable showing him how to wear it.

Luckily growing up I had a couple of brothers and so I had a basic idea of how they work.  Even more lucky the one I happened to buy was extremely self explanatory so we figured it out pretty quickly.  Andy is still young enough that he wasn't embarrassed to have me help him and at the same time thought it was really cool.  I tried to explain to him how it worked and make sure he had it on right so was trying to somewhat lightly punch him in the crotch so he knew what it was supposed to feel like if he got hit and make sure everything was in the correct place.  His natural instinct was the cover up every time I went to punch him, so it took awhile for us to make sure it was on right.

I left the room and told him to finish getting dressed and went to do something with the girls.  A few minutes later Andy comes out in only his jock strap and cup and his black baseball socks up to his knees like a grandpa and says, "Sarah, punch me as hard as you can wherever you want!"  Sarah was totally confused and just sat there not knowing what to do so he said it again, "Punch me as hard as you can wherever you want!"  She was still extremely hesitant, smart girl assumed if she punched him he would punch her back, so I said, "Sarah, he wants you to punch him in the penis so you can see how well his cup works."

Yes, at that point I was tired and didn't feel like watching it all play out or waiting for her to finally figure out what the heck he was asking her to do.  I went downstairs at that point so am not sure how it ended, but I don't think she ended up punching him.  He, however, kept hitting himself in the cup the rest of the afternoon, still unbelieving that he could punch himself there and it didn't hurt.