hard wooden bleachers.

My mom came to all my high school basketball games that she could. Obviously, if she had to work, that took priority, or if the game was an hour and a half away, it wasn't worth it for her to drive all that way. But if the game was in town, she was there in the stands. Several other mothers did this, too; it's what parents do. Show up, clap, cheer, say, "Hey, that's my kid."

I'm having trouble imagining how I would have felt if she had not come. The idea of my mother not going to a sporting event in which her child was a participant is pretty alien. That's what moms do, right? I mean, they don't have to, but they kinda do have to, don't they? There's no law, they didn't sign a contract or anything, but if you don't show up to watch your kid, then who will?

It could not have been all that fun for her. She had to pay to get in and then sit on hard wooden bleachers and we never won. That is only a slight exaggeration. We won probably five games in three years. Most of the time, it wasn't even close. I guess it was worse for the parents whose kids were just as crappy at basketball at I was but didn't have the benefit of being tall. At least I got a lot of playing time. It would be hard to go to blowout after blowout to see other kids play crappy basketball while mine twiddled her thumbs on the bench until two minutes left in the fourth quarter.

After our games, the Varsity boys would play. They were good, and their games were exciting to watch. People who weren't even related to the players would come to the games, clap, cheer, stand up, say "Hey, that's my team!" Sometimes it was a blowout for our side, and the parents of the boys on the other team sat on hard wooden bleachers and were good parents when it would have been a lot more fun to be good parents for the winning team.

I was thinking about my mom sitting on hard wooden bleachers last night. I was sitting on a hard wooden bench at the Local 506, drinking a PBR. These were the people in the bar: three band members, one girlfriend, two employees, two roadies, one sister, and three friends. I didn't happen to see the sign where it said what the state fire marshal said what the maximum capacity for the bar was, but I'm pretty sure it was more than twelve. But I was there. I clapped, I cheered, and had anyone asked, I would have said, "Yeah, that's my boyfriend."

Depending on your inclination, it may be more frustrating to watch your boyfriend play the bass to an empty house than to watch your daughter play power forward to a sparse crowd. My mother's daughter, she was not good at basketball, and her teammates were not very good either. They didn't bring in the spectators because they lost and they lost because they sucked. My boyfriend's band does not suck, and sometimes they do play to packed bars. But sometimes you can flick your bottle cap across the room without hitting another person. It was discouraging to play basketball and not be good at it, but I understood why the stands were empty. If you play the bass and you are good at it, but still no one shows, where's the justice in that? Maybe they're not marketable or maybe they haven't met the right people. Maybe they haven't got the right sound or maybe they haven't got the right look, but they've practiced, practiced, practiced, so why isn't Carnegie Hall calling?

A girl I met at a show a couple of weeks ago asked me if I was "so over this," meaning was I over the thrill of seeing my boyfriend on stage. I mean, I still think he looks pretty hot up there. But it's been four years of packed houses and empty clubs, drunken house parties and cul-de-sac parties on the verge of being broken up by the cops, genuine music venues and pizza places with a spare corner next to an electrical outlet. Yeah, I'm over it, but I still go. I don't have to go to shows, but I do kinda have to, don't I?

At least at shows, there is beer. It seems unlikely that there will ever be alcohol at high school sporting events, but my mom would have been totally down for that.