At first, it was all fun and games. But I curse the day I let inflatable Ben Wallace into my home.

That Playair Inflatable Defender Ben Wallace seemed like the perfect thing for my son, Coby. He gets lonely being an only child, and there aren’t many other kids on our block. My wife, Renee, is a great mom, but she’s never been the athletic type. Frankly, it was killing me to drive off to work every morning. How could I concentrate on selling prepaid funeral services when all I could think about was Coby, forlornly shooting baskets all by himself, like a kid in a PSA about deadbeat dads?

So when I saw this 84” high PVC version of the four-time NBA Defender of the Year and five-time winner of the Darnell Hillman Sky-Fro Award, I thought it would be perfect for Coby. He’d be able to practice his shooting arc and his dribbling, and pretend like he was on the court with one of the game’s all-time greats. I’d be lying if I didn’t add that, maybe, I hoped inflatable Ben Wallace would provide a little of the fatherly guidance that I couldn’t give.

I should’ve seen what was going to happen next. But no, I was too seduced by the glamorous, high-stakes world of prepaid funeral services to recognize that my family was falling apart. One night I came home late from work to find my seat at the dinner table filled by inflatable Ben. I shrugged it off – if Coby and Renee wanted a little extra company, how could I deny them that?

Then, a few weeks later, Renee and I were getting ready for bed and she casually mentioned what a great time Coby had had that day at the Father-Son Games at school… with inflatable Ben. They hadn’t even mentioned it to me. I felt less like a husband and father, and more like a stranger who happened to rent a room in my house.

When I returned home early from the Global Prepaid Funeral Services Conference at the Hague to find Ben and Renee in our bed together, it just confirmed what I’d known was coming. Ben and Renee told me they were in love and were going to get married as soon as the divorce was final. Of course, she did the talking. I took it pretty badly and did some things I wish I hadn’t. They patched up inflatable Ben’s PVC pretty easily, but that didn’t help me at the custody hearings.

Sometimes I drive by my house at night, in defiance of the court order. The hoop is still in the driveway. I can almost hear the sound of Coby dribbling on the asphalt, like on all those mornings while he watched me drive away. It rips away another part of my soul every time. But the worst are those times when I can see a silhouette in the window, its hair wild, its arms eternally raised, a PVC phantom who’s more of a husband, a father, a man than I could ever be.

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