Family Bonding

Our daughter Annie often likes to remind us of the importance of family bonding.  Well, we've already enjoyed a few hours of that after her arrival home last night just prior to the ZAGS game. 

She immediately bonded with doggies she hadn't seen since Christmas; then we wasted no time getting over to my sisters' where Second Avenue Pizza, the big game and more family members awaited. 

We didn't actively do a lot of human bonding except maybe with the pizza, the Klondyke bars, the television set and our respective cell phones, yet we still enjoyed a comfortable evening with folks with whom we always feel comfortable.

Sadly, it turned out to be the final bonding session specifically for this year's ZAGS season, but the tough last-minute loss certainly didn't dampen our spirits toward this year's team--which like so many other fans----we consider to be a part of our family. 

That portion of our extended family will change with some graduations and maybe the NBA draft.  Nevertheless, we'll always feel a special connection to each and every one of them wherever they go.

After all, we still feel connected with Jeremy and Robert, Kelly and David and Mattie and Kevin and Elias and Sam and Mike and Gary . . . all the rest of those fabulous ZAGS players over the years who have helped us with the bonding we do with our own families while watching them dribble and pass and shoot basketballs in gyms across the country and even the world. 

We'll have some new faces to attach to names next fall when Mark Few and his staff put together another ZAGS team.  We don't even know those dapper guys also known as red-shirts or transfers who sit on the bench with the team, but we've seen them enough as fashionistas this year that it will be fun next year to see them wearing ZAGS uniforms and contributing their athletic magic to the ZAG family phenomenon that so many of us love.

During the games many of us have also bonded with others thanks to our Facebook accounts or Twitter or texting.  The virtual family of ZAGS lovers has been alive, well and vocal this year, and even new members have joined the fold----one of them last night texting early in the game, "Clap, clap, clap."  That was when the ZAGS looked like they were going to win another segment of the dance. 

I've enjoyed my family of Facebook friends who always react, usually in positive ways, to my goofy posts preceding each game.  I got a little carried away with my vision yesterday, posting a photo of the Chicago skyline and suggesting that history would be made there when the ZAGS earned their first trip to the Final Four.

Maybe next year in another city.  It will happen. 

But it's been fun and it was even fun until the very end when my friend Barb announced that she had gone to the computer room at her house up Pack River when ZAGmania was taking a hit on the gym floor at the hands of the Syracuse Orange.  (By the way, no orange was allowed in my sisters' house last night). 

Barb posted that she was staying in the computer room because the ZAGS luck started to change for the better.

I posted for her to stay there----that someone had to sacrifice if we were gonna win this one---might as well be Barb at her computer.

Later, she said her husband told her she could come out of the room when two minutes were left in the game. 

To which I posted, "Caution, Bob, caution."  

This morning I'm wondering if Bob failed to see my warning and told Barb she could come back out and watch the game cuz about the two-minute mark, the tide turned again and not in the ZAGS favor.

Whatever the case, Barb and Bob from Pack River and Judy from Seattle and Jeff from Los Angeles with his ZAGnut bars and Mow from Palm Springs who is a Jay Hawk through and through but nice enough to cheer for the ZAGS and a whole bunch of other regulars have formed a fun-filled Facebook contingent for yet another extension of family united by ZAGS.  

The Facebook bond has been wonderful.  I'm sure we'll revive it again come next November when we bring out our shirts and our hats and our game beads or our ZAG pj's.  

Some of us will continue to post corny stuff on our Facebook walls, concerning upcoming ZAGS games, and then during the actual games,  some of us may stay in the computer room when things get bad.

Of course, there will be always be food to fatten us up and to help fortify the bond.  b

By about the third game,  we'll be on a first-name, familial basis with few new players to add to our ever extending family glued together by ZAGmania.

It's been a great run.  Congratulations and thanks to Mark Few and the gang who live by the slogan United We ZAG.  Can't think of a better way to describe this wonderful annual phenomenon. 

It's spring.  On to other things!