The kingdom of a faraway land is like a mother looking to sign her young son up for club basketball. When she found a club of decent value, she did all she was told to get his license. She filled out forms, she copied paperwork, she scheduled a Special Sports Physical, and she waited. The son could not play basketball until he was deemed healthy. The mother wondered why this was all necessary since the son was just deemed healthy to enter the faraway land and then again to enter the faraway school. She had many doctor’s bills and x-rays to prove it, but alas – this was not good enough. This made her confused and angry, but she tried to keep this from her son. She did not want to rob him of his nine year old joy of the game. A game that was so dangerous it required three physicals and a license.

And if truth be told, the mother did not actually schedule the Special Sports Physical because she couldn’t speak the language. The club of decent value scheduled the Special Sports Physical on her behalf. She thought this might hurry up the process, but alas part deux. This is how it will be at the end of February. All manners of people will be trying to get their Special Sports Physical.

When the appointed time came one month later for her to take her son to his Special Sports Physical, she got the time wrong. In the faraway land, you must use math after noon. To make matters worse, there was not a soul to be found at the Special Sports Physical Complex, the son had missed his first faraway language lesson to make the wrong time, and arithmetic accusations were flying. They went away frustrated, but resolved to come back two hours later. In this faraway land, doctor’s offices are open at 6:15pm but not at 4:15pm. This, she reasoned, must be because many people swallow chicken bones at dinner.

The mother and son returned at 6:10 to find a room full of people. Surprised to be sharing an appointment time with so many others, they were sent to wait in a queue. But first, the son was sent to the toilet to pee in a lidless cup. He returned with hot, uncapped pee in hand and continued his wait, but now with greater responsibility. Soon they were called in for the nurse’s portion of the visit. Pee responsibility was abdicated, measurements were taken, health history was repeated, lung capacity was analyzed, and body mass index was calculated once again. They were returned to the waiting room for the doctor’s portion of the visit – hopeful that there were near the end. Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but this one doctor had an entire football team to examine before she would be ready to see the son.

This was not the mother’s finest hour and ten minutes.

Finally, they were the last to see the doctor. The doctor was an older woman from the faraway land, stern and no nonsense. They struggled to communicate. The mother wondered if the doctor had been warned of her waiting room sighing. The son wondered how many more times he would need to be weighed. The doctor wondered and then asked out loud why the son had so many bruises on his back. The mother said “You mean this one bruise?” and then became very flustered. The doctor asked if the son was hard of hearing. The mother said “No.” The doctor said “Then he doesn’t listen well?” The mother said, “No, he listens well” and then became red. The mother tried to explain that it was hard to understand her with the language barrier and the accent while she busied herself testing the son’s perfect hearing. Ignoring the mother, the doctor concluded: “His hearing is ok, so the problem is his focus. He has terrible focus.”

This, the mother thought while breaking the metaphor for a moment, “Yo. Hold up. For one -- he's sitting right here and by the way, he doesn't have a focus issue. And for deux -- shall we revisit that this whole process is for 9 year old basketball." The thought made the mother feel better for a moment, but only a moment as the son was sad and confused when they were hastily dismissed and told that the club of decent value would be getting her report.

Upon their return home, the mother called the father to give the report of the pee, her waiting room harrumphing and all the misery that followed. She wailed thinking that the son would not pass the physical. When the father asked under what grounds, the mother said “I don’t know. I just have a feeling.” And that was good enough for him to end the conversation.

A week later when she was in an even farther away faraway land flowing with olives and fish of the Mediterranean Sea, word was sent that her son had received his license. It was a joyous moment except that the first game would be tomorrow and they could not yet return from the farther away faraway land.

Since the episode with the doctor, the mother has asked the father to take charge of requesting the game schedule. Because it is held in secret, it requires a person of great wisdom and even greater patience to unlock.

So, pee with gladness for sometimes that is the only way to get your cup to runneth over.