The Halftime Ham

A boy goes to a basketball game

That is Thomas hamming it up front and center. He ran onto the court and lined up with his classmates and got recognized for perfect attendance during halftime at a Gardner-Webb men’s basketball game. Gardner-Webb partners with local elementary schools, giving kids a free ticket who have perfect attendance for the month. It was Thomas’s first game in a “basketball stadium,” as he calls it, and he watched the game enthusiastically, leading cheers of “defense,” often when Gardner Webb had the ball—we’re still working on game fundamentals.

Watching him, I couldn’t help but remember my own impassioned fanaticism when I was about his age. I have always been an NC State fan and my big brother was a Duke fan. It thrilled my heart whenever Duke lost, which in those days rarely happened because they had Grant Hill and Christian Laettner. My dad and I were in Houston, Texas, visiting his cousin, when Grant Hill hurled the basketball down the court with two seconds left, when Christian Laettner caught it and beat the buzzer, beating Kentucky and depriving me of my brother’s suffering.

The stakes were not so high in this game between the Gardner-Webb Runnin’ Bulldogs and Brevard Tornadoes, and Thomas has no brother, whose suffering brings joy, but he quickly became invested in the outcome, even if he forgot, from time to time, which team he was cheering for. A cheerleader threw him a rally rag and he maniacally whirled it above his head, and it was his most prized possession until I brought back Air Heads and Nerd Clusters from the concession stand, which was admittedly a bad decision on my part but I had waited in line for a long time and they had just run out of popcorn. What can you do?

Thomas chomped. He cheered. He danced. He had an all around good time, and afterwards we went to look at Christmas lights in town.

And he fell asleep in the car.