The plan is that your kid will play sports. Doesn't seem unrealistic or far-fetched, does it? You love sports, your kid will play sports, and upon that lattice your relationship will grow.

That was the plan.

Wasn't my first son's plan. Wasn't my other son's plan, either. What's that saying -- men plan, and God laughs? Not at my house. At my house, Dad plans and boys laugh.

Then they hop on the Internet.

The Internet changed everything, and not just everything social and financial and enormous. It changed the small stuff, too, stuff as small as a 5-year-old boy and the childhood he'll pursue.

When I was 5, I pursued sports. Didn't really have a choice. My dad loved sports and gave me a ball of some sort and basically said, "Here. Entertain yourself."

And I did. Dad tells stories about me as a kid in the backyard, trying to juggle a soccer ball like I'd seen pros do it on TV. I'd be outside for hours, trying to master one stupid move, and not just because I was driven to be good at it. That's what I used to think -- what an impressively driven kid I was -- but now I see something else:

What options did I have? There was no ESPN on cable, but even if there was, it wouldn't have mattered because there was no cable in my house. Internet? No such thing. Video games might have existed in 1975, but not to me. My options were that soccer ball or ... nothing. So I chose the soccer ball. Then the baseball. Football. Basketball. Tennis, golf. I found some bamboo once and tried to pole vault over my cat. That didn't end well for either of us.

So anyway, my dad eventually came outside to join me. That was my childhood. Him handing me a ball, me figuring out what to do with it -- and once I did, him coming outside to play that sport with me. Any idea how wonderful that was? Dad and I in the backyard, him throwing baseballs or footballs all over the place, me chasing them down. When it was too cold outside, we'd go into the living room and he'd try to lob a Nerf soccer ball over my head. If the ball hit the wall behind me, he won. If I jumped and caught it, I won. When you're about 4 feet tall, you can play that game.

When you're more like 5 feet tall, you drive around Oxford, Miss., looking for a slightly bigger facility. We went to Vaught–Hemingway Stadium on the Ole Miss campus and kicked field goals. We found back doors unlocked on Sunday mornings and shot baskets on a campus basketball court, a real one with hardwood floors and glass backboards. When all you know about basketball is asphalt and a metal backboard, that's a thrill.

That was childhood for me, fatherhood for him. It was incredible. We loved it, and we loved each other, and let me tell you something: It was easy.

Being a father today? For me? Not as easy. I planned to do for my sons what Dad did for me: Pitch them batting practice, coach their teams, tell them how great they are, whether they were great or not. That was my plan.

My boys laughed.

Strange feeling, to be a sports writer and to have your kids reject sports. Well, reject is harsh, because it implies that my kids considered sports long enough to reject them. They didn't. My older son loved his bicycle, and my younger son loved animals -- pets we had, yucky creatures he found outside -- and that's what they did until they were old enough to figure out what Dad was doing.

What was I doing? I was sitting behind a computer, writing about sports. My boys couldn't grasp what I was reading, but they sure did like where it was happening. The Internet ... it's like a TV, only better! You watch TV, but the Internet does your bidding. My kids loved the control. And the air conditioning.

And me, I'm thinking, "Computers matter. They're the future. These are important skills." So I encouraged their time behind the keyboard. That was last week, give or take 10 years. Today, both kids can type 60 words a minute. One got through some lonely preteen years by becoming brilliant at gaming, and that brilliance turned into confidence -- which has turned into a happy, sweet kid with a great core of friends and future I envy.

My other son, the younger one, is so good at computers that I'm beaming even now, as I type this. One day he was fiddling feverishly on his laptop when I said, "What about your homework?"

Said my son: "I'm doing it now."

Said me: "Looks like you're playing a game."

Said my son: "I'm doing a PowerPoint presentation."

Oh.

He was 12.

They can do things on the computer I can't even imagine, finding nooks and crannies I didn't know existed. One kid, my younger boy, made roller-coasters and zoos and theme parks. We weren't playing sports, but I watched those buildings go up. I call him "Hacker Boy." He's great at video games in part because he's great at video games, and in part because he knows how to game the system. Little freaking hacker boy ...

The other kid is more of a gamer, more to himself, so I moved his laptop into my home office. He's sitting next to me as I write this, doing his thing while I'm doing mine. Every now and then he giggles or shouts at something, and I roll over to see what's going on. And then I'm giggling or shouting. Fatherhood.

So Happy Father's Day to my dad. We had fun, didn't we?

And Happy Father's Day to my sons. We're having fun, aren't we?