Monday, May 05, 2008

not a soccer mom

C's first soccer practice was last Monday. It was pouring. Half the kids didn't attend, and the coach thankfully sent them home early.

Lack of practice did not however prevent them from having a game on Saturday. It was at the "Soccerplex," which is a whole lotta fields alongside a highway, the noise of which adds to the chaos. Again, it was raining (though not as hard). Dan and I were surprised at the number of parents who enthusiastically delivered their children to the 9 a.m. game anyway- it was kind of a culture shock for us. We spent much of the morning entertained by the absurdity of the situation and wondering how many of the other parents felt the same way.

C played on half a field, with its lines painted across those of the full field, so it was confusing. That was perhaps the least of his team's problems however, since none of the kids had ever played together and C didn't appear to be the only one who only vaguely knew the rules. (Not our fault, by the way; Dan tried to go over them with him, but C rebelled halfway through.) A lot of the kids had been playing for years though (there were three-year-olds playing the next field over!) and some of them were surprisingly good, and even the clueless kids did better at maintaining their positions than I expected, especially given the well-meaning but disorganized coaching.

C surprised us by his ability to stand up for himself (requesting several times to play offense), management of his mistakes (he was able to shrug off being told to re-do a throw-in because both his feet hadn't been on the ground rather than getting upset/ embarrassed by it), and generally "normal" behavior. He didn't actually talk to any of the other kids, but he wasn't overtly antisocial either, which was good to see.

A was surprisingly patient for the first half of the game but then got understandably bored. She noticed the concession stand and tried to get us to utilize it rather slyly.

A: I'm hungry.
S: Here, Daddy packed potatoes for you!
A (whining): Daddy said he'd bring me a banana!
S: Really? Hmm- oh, here it is!
A (clearly disappointed that we hadn't screwed up): Actually I don't want a banana OR potatoes.
S: Well let me know if you decide you're hungry.
A: I want something different.
S: The game will be over in about 20 minutes.
A (giving up on subtlety): I think they sell food over there.
S: But we brought food with us, so we don't need to buy that.

I managed to distract her by running up and down hills for a while. But five minutes later, Dan appears and she again casually suggests a visit to the concession stand.

D: We didn't bring money for that.
A (bursting into tears): BUT YOU BROUGHT YOUR WALLET!!!!!

2 comments:

poz said...

I don't remember if you played soccer, but I did that after a failed attempt at little league. I don't remember when I started, though... Mom, do you remember?

I was in Scouts too. Which is like 7 years old?

Sarah said...

I played for one season when I was around 9. It was fairly depressing because we played decently for the first half of the season and ended up in the "A" league for the second half. We were the lowest-ranked team there, though, and lost every game after that. I didn't want to repeat that experience....