Bargain Shopping

My daughters both said they wanted to play basketball. I ended up as the coach of their team. At this moment, I am telling this from a coach's perspective. Neither of them has much talent for the sport, mostly because they haven't had much exposure to it. (Mom mode: There are too many other things for kids to learn besides sports!) Inwe takes coaching well. Larien? She takes any tips on how to improve her athletic ability as an insult. While she could swat a ball away, she didn't understand anything else in a way that could be useful in a game.

Now, I'm mom again.

Larien complained about it to our friend T, who offered to help her with basketball in exchange for study time for the college courses T is taking. Larien accepted. We hit a bump in the road when Larien freaked out about too much going on in her life. In an unlikely change of opinion, I told her she could stop playing basketball. After some hemming and hawing, she agreed that it would be best to not play the sport. I'd had another girl added to my team, which meant that I could afford to lose a player.

Tonight, Larien asked T if she needed help studying for a test. Being the nice young woman that she is, T said she could and made a statement kind of like, "That's what we agreed upon. I would help you with basketball, and you'd help me with my classes."

"Except, you don't have to help me anymore. You should just buy me Reese's peanut butter cups for my help."

Someone in the room asked (honestly, I don't know who said this, because the place was packed with family), "Larien, do you think you're smarter than T?"

"Well--," she put her finger to her mouth as she thought of a response, "I'm probably smarter than she was when she was in first grade."