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My father has been eating breakfast at the same restaurant for as long as I can remember. He’s probably been eating there longer than that. When I was a child, occasionally I would get to go to breakfast with him: a Saturday when I had a late soccer game, an in-service day at school when my mom still had to work, a random day during the summer.
Once, when I was around ten, during one of these rare breakfasts, I was particularly antsy. It wasn’t unusual for me to be antsy but this day I was more energy-filled than most. Perhaps it was to calm me down or to keep me still, my father took a slip of paper, folded it over and around and over again, and formed it into a perfect triangle. The mere sight of this alone made me awestruck, but what happened next was even better. My father stood the triangle on end, left pointer finger on top, point facing me, and flicked it with his right finger. The triangle flew, end over end, in perfect rhythm, and stuck me right in the chest. He then showed me how to make a football goal post with my thumbs and fingers, and how to flick the paper “football” between them. For the next half hour, before the food arrived, during our meal, and long after the scrambled eggs grew cold on the plate, we played football. I don’t know who won. I don’t know what the final score was, or if we even kept score. I just know that it was the greatest morning of my young life.
Last year, late in the fall, when work had me bogged down, and I had a stack of papers to grade, my own essays to write, and a house which needed attention, I made the realization that I wasn’t spending nearly enough time with my son. I can’t say that he “helped” me make this realization, but I wouldn’t put it past him either. I discussed this lack of attention with my wife, and how I could find more time to spend with him. “You both enjoy breakfast,” she said. And she was right, we do. The next day, one late November Sunday morning, my son and I went to breakfast, just the two of us.
Breakfast with an eleven-year-old is a tricky thing. They don’t really know what they want, other than sugar, nor have they developed a real sense of how to order food at a restaurant. My son ordered pancakes, bacon, potatoes, eggs, sweet tea and hot chocolate.
While we waited, I attempted to make small talk with him; school, friends, video games, etc. I realized that we didn’t do much real talking, even when we were together, and even when we were talking. So, I went with plan B. I took a jelly packet, one of the small rectangular Smucker’s grape packets and flipped it over on the table. I flicked it toward him. It stopped about a foot short of the edge. He looked at me quizzically, and I told him to flick it back. He did. For the next fifteen minutes until the food arrived we flicked the jelly packet back and forth, with the objective being to get a portion of the packet to stick out over the edge of the table. This game isn’t new. I didn’t invent it. Parents have been playing this type of game for decades, some with sugar packets, some with coffee creamers, come with folded up paper in the shape of a triangle. We play with jelly packets.
By the time the food arrived, we had an intricate scorekeeping system using sugar packets, equal packets, sweet and low packets, and even Splenda packets if one of us got to twenty (neither have, yet). We included a speed round, a bonus round, a tiebreaker scenario. All of this within a single fifteen-minute window. When the food came, he picked at the pancakes, moved the potatoes around on his plate, and wrapped the bacon in his napkin to take home to our puppies. “Are you ready for the next round?” He said. And I was. The following Sunday morning, of his own volition, he came into the bedroom around seven. “Are you ready to go to breakfast?” he asked. And I was.
For the next six weeks, we went to breakfast every Sunday morning. We had the same server, who knows our food and drink order, we sit in the same section, and we play Jelly Ball. On New Year’s Eve, the last Sunday, of 2017, I gave him a trophy. It reads “Jelly Ball Champion 2017.” With the exception of the first game, he won every round that year. He wasn’t expecting a trophy, and, since he has no interest in organized sports, this was the first trophy he had ever received. By the time we left the restaurant that morning, he was already planning the following year’s tournament schedule; how many weeks he would have to win to get another trophy, what month it would be if he won the first 27 rounds. Turns out it is July.
The best part of Jelly Ball isn’t the game, or the breakfast, or the winning or losing. The best part of Jelly Ball is the time together.
Conversations happen naturally now, words flow freely. We talk about school, and my work, and his video games. We talk about what I am writing about, or what he is writing about, or who did what to whom at school. We talk about current events. Recently, after the Parkland shooting, he explained his school’s active shooter drill (see my column from last week). A simple game of flick the jelly packet has changed our relationship. It has opened the door to dialogue. It has provided for us a common love. It has made us better friends. It doesn’t matter if I never tally a mark in the win column, I am the winner.
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Photo credit: Getty Images