W. BRUCE CAMERON - Volleyball Dad

I taught my daughter everything I know about volleyball, which is, in essence, how to identify a volleyball. Thus prepared, she has gone on to play the sport in high school and college, and her club team came in first place at nationals a few years ago — in other words, I did a great job.

My daughter seems to believe that most of the credit should go to her for all the games and drills and practices, which is just silly.

“Your natural athleticism flows through my DNA into yours,” I inform her biologically. “My father was a great fisherman, and my grandfather played basketball back when being 5 feet, 6 inches tall was not considered a handicap.”

I have a picture of my grandfather’s championship team, class of 1930. The eight wispy lads, shockingly pale, actually look up to my grandfather, who towers above them, his shorts sliding off his hips and his socks puddled around his spindly ankles. Apparently, Grandpa played basketball before they invented elastic, muscles and African Americans.

I also have a photograph of my father, athletically holding an enormous salmon, grinning at the camera, his other hand clutching a beer. It takes a lot of strength to hold up a fish that size, which is why the guide is helping.

With these two pictures as evidence of genetic destiny, I don’t even bother discussing my own athletic career, though to this day I’m sure I’m identified with great reverence in my former high school as a legendary alternate for the diving team before I got a groin injury. (I do have a picture somewhere of me in an elegantly skinny swan dive, my ribs handsomely on display. I appear so insubstantial that if I had a feather in each hand I could probably fly around the room like Dumbo.)

My daughter also discounts the advice I’ve given her throughout her volleyball career, such as “jump higher.” To her, the fact that she is out on the floor actually playing somehow outweighs the fact that I am shouting advice from the stands.

Again, this is silly. When Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger steered his plane to land in the Hudson river, did we praise the pilot or the plane? Clearly, the person directing the action is far more important than the person who is merely following orders. I defy anyone to argue that “jump higher” is bad advice.

I also drove her to countless volleyball tournaments, patiently steering through traffic while the girls in the back kept up a running conversation like this:

“Did you see Scott?”

“Oh my God he is so cute.”

“He is so cute.”

“When he told that joke at lunch?”

“He is so funny.”

“He is so funny.”

“Oh my God he’s cute.”

“He is so cute.”

In my opinion, the fact that I could listen to four straight hours of this without deliberately ramming a bridge abutment is proof of my value to the team, but somehow this sacrifice escapes her.

The topic of why I deserve all the credit for her skills in volleyball, which I now think everyone can agree with, is of importance because this afternoon I find myself running “drills” with my daughter.

(For the uninitiated, a “drill” is where I stand on the opposite side of the net from my daughter and lightly tap the volleyball up in the air so she can leap up, smack the ball with the force of Sully Sullenberger’s plane hitting a goose, and send it streaking back over the net to break my face. It similar to facing a firing squad except that it keeps happening over and over.)

After we run drills for an hour, she is sweating and satisfied, and I’m bleeding and concussed. It’s a rare moment in this busy world for the two of us to be together, alone, in a quiet gym where the only sound is my whimpering.

“You know, Dad,” she says, surveying the place where she has played countless games, “volleyball has been the greatest thing in my whole life.”

She reaches out and gives my arm a squeeze. “Thanks,” she says. I smile back.

That’s actually all the credit I need.

To write Bruce Cameron, visit his website at http://www.wbrucecameron.com. To find out more about Bruce Cameron and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at http://www.creators.com.

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