“Who’s that?” one of the kids asked.
“He’s a friend.”
“Hmm,” they said with an attitude and suspicious smile.
Everyone sat on the floor in a circle with their water bottles and towels. Lior sat next to me, whispering “You stink” in my ear.
“What have you learned today?” Joel asked.
The kids avoided answering the question by sipping water and wiping the sweat off their foreheads.
Alma, another mentor, sat next to us. “No one learned anything? For real?”
“Um…” Remi said, “We shouldn’t underestimate our opponent, even if they’re from the Cretaceous period?”
“Why is that?” I asked, throwing him a sweaty towel, which landed right on his face.
They all shrugged. “Because you won even though you’re old?”
I chuckled. “Yes, we won and we’re old. Why do you think that is?”
Ted, who was splayed on the floor, raised his hand with a thumbs-up. He was by far the oldest of us at forty-five. With three young kids at home, he always moaned about being too old for this, but he still turned up every week without fail.
I’d always thought of him as being part of a different generation from the rest of us in the mentor group, but he was younger than Lior by two years. I definitely didn’t see Lior as old or like I didn’t have much in common. Quite the opposite.
“No,” I said. “Forget the court for a moment. How many of you have part-time jobs?”
They all raised their hands.
“So you’ve already met someone with more experience, who’s been there longer, right?”
“Yeah, one of the servers at the diner is almost seventy,” Lucas said.
“I bet they’re a lot slower doing certain tasks, right?” I waited for their nods of agreement.
“Okay, I have a challenge for you this week.”
They all groaned. “We already get homework from school.”
“This isn’t homework. I want you to find someone at work who’s older than you, and I want you to strike up a conversation and learn something about them.”
“Like what?”
I shrugged. “Anything you want. When we meet next week, I want you to introduce them to us as if they were here. Withouttelling us their name, age, or what they do, I want you to tell us what you’ve learned.”
More groans. I threw Joel’s sweaty towel in their direction and sent them all home.
We usually hung around until everyone was gone and then loaded the balls into West’s car.
Some of the kids didn’t have great conditions at home, so if anyone needed something from us—a chat, some food, or a lift—we’d be here for them.
Lior hung back while I caught up with the mentor crew.
“That was a good game,” Joel said, holding his fist up for a bump.
“Cheaper than a gym membership, that’s for sure,” Ted added.
“Hey, guys,” Alma said. “There’s this girl in my sister’s class. She just moved into the city. Looks like her foster parents are cool people, but she’s struggling to adjust. You think the guys would mind having a girl around?”
