The Ground Beneath Their Feet

Big Cuter's high school lacrosse team got no respect.  The administration, the athletic department, the other students, no one seemed to care.  Parents hired coaches and tried to cobble together practice schedules on fields that were never available.  One year, they used a paved parking lot and the grassy overflow area behind it.... and they had to travel to another town's Rec Center to do so.

Then, a private/public partnership was proposed.  The Community College would allow the high school to renovate the college's playing field.  In return, the high school could hold lacrosse practices and games on the College's campus.  We had the money, they had the flat land, the field was in disrepair, the kids needed a place to play.... it was a perfect plan.

Parents were dunned for the funds, of course.  There were a lot of fabulously wealthy families who were more than able to fund the whole expensive-but-not-obscenely-so project without blinking, but TBG and Blake's Dad stepped up and paid for it themselves.  

At the first game on the new grass, the parents sitting beside me in the stands wondered where our husbands were.  "Down there, sitting on their field," said we, pointing to the guys, on the side of the field, down by the crease, in their low-to-the-ground-portable-game-watching-chairs.

They paid for it and they were going to sit on it.

Fast forward, to yesterday.  I was explaining to TBG that we were buying four 70 oz. Metallic Brilliant Blue Garage Floor Kits for SIR and Little Cuter's anniversary/new house present.  No one sets up a better garage/workshop than SIR (unless, perhaps, it's Big Bob, his father).  Here in Tucson our lovely (if often dusty and dirty) garage floor factored heavily in our decision to buy the house.  

I'm serious.  

So, SIR's desire for shiny blue flooring was a simple solution to my shopping dilemma.  "But," said TBG, "it's not a present if he has to do it himself.  That's work, not a gift."

After reminding my spouse that his daughter had married a man who loves projects, who loves his garage, who is already grinding the existing nearly-but-not-perfectly-pristine floor, whose wife is delighted with the idea, I smiled.

He has two sons.  He's paid for the ground beneath their feet twice now.