There's always a moment when I watch my boy run down the hill to catch the bus when I'm almost laughing out loud. He swaggers. It isn't a pretense. He's built like a brick shit house and the swagger suits his broad shoulders. I love to look out the window at him when he doesn't know I'm watching, and from a distance he almost has the movements and proportions of a man.
When my boy was two or three years old, grown men sometimes came up to him at the park and picked him up. They usually talked about football. My friends and I thought it was strange until we realized that these men were usually there with little girls and were probably more normal than they appeared. Our clue that they weren't total creeps was the crestfallen looks on their faces when I told them we didn't really follow football.
There's a mom at the elementary school who just won't leave me alone. She insists, vehemently and repeatedly, that I just have to put my son into football next season. I keep telling her that we don't decide for him what sports he signs up for, that we let him decide for himself. He's been involved in soccer, karate, gymnastics, baseball, orienteering, biking, hiking, and canoeing. Personally, I like that last three, but I also get a thrill out of watching him practice karate. When he starts swinging his nunchuks around, it amazes me. He made it look so easy that I hit myself in the head with them three times before I realized that it takes some doing and I wasn't the one who should be doing it. Right now, he tells me, karate is his thing, but that he does want to try football at some point.
That doesn't seem to satisfy this woman and she has absolutely nothing else to say to me. Now, I have to admit to you that I'm not all that easy going. I wish I were. I pretend that I am, but I'm not. Finally, this woman said, "Jill, I know how scared you are of football, that he might get hurt out there, but you just have to get that kid into football next fall. There are even off-season sessions you could ...." I could feel my blood pressure rising.
Sure, I know about the medical issues of post-NFL players and the fact that so many of them can't keep up with the costs of their medical care. I know about the potential for brain damage with repeated concussions that can happen even in high school football. But I knew an experienced canoeist who died in 18 inches of fast water when falling out of his canoe at a bad time and getting his ankle caught upstream. I know the potential for bad breaks in gymnastics. I've seen the bruises my boy gets in karate. He's even come home with a bloody lip when some kid couldn't control himself. So what this woman was saying just pissed me off. "I don't have anything against my boy playing football. It's that he just isn't that interested," I told her. When she started in again, I told her, "Look. I've considered what you're saying. I get it. My boy's built for football. Okay. But I want you to stop bugging me about this. Right now! Or my answer will become a complete and irrevocable 'NO.' Do you understand me?" Somehow, I had reverted to the mom voice I get in the sporting goods store when I haven't eaten and we're running late.
So we were in the sporting goods store the other day. My boy's karate sensei kept telling us that he needed to wear a cup for practice. Somehow, in the scheme of things, I never imagined myself telling some teen aged retail clerk that I needed to check out sizing for a cup. There are lots of things I've done as a mother that weren't all that easy. Don't even ask me about that stomach flu all of us got a couple of years ago when we couldn't keep up with the laundry because everyone was so sick to their stomachs. That was 48 hours of sheer hell. I even dreamed of being swept away in a sea of puke that second night. But this, asking a young man for help sizing a cup, was its own special hell. And of course, my boy wasn't helping me. I had hoped that he could ask for his own nine-year-old self, but no. He was nowhere to be found. After the clerk set me up with the cup that I needed to buy, I went searching for my boy in the rest of the store.
He was looking at the football gear. He's watched some football on television, but without the shirt over it, that gear looks an awful lot like what his character wears when he plays the video game Gauntlet.
"Mom, will you buy that for me? I want to sign up for football. Please, Mom ......"
Thank you for listening, jb
When my boy was two or three years old, grown men sometimes came up to him at the park and picked him up. They usually talked about football. My friends and I thought it was strange until we realized that these men were usually there with little girls and were probably more normal than they appeared. Our clue that they weren't total creeps was the crestfallen looks on their faces when I told them we didn't really follow football.
There's a mom at the elementary school who just won't leave me alone. She insists, vehemently and repeatedly, that I just have to put my son into football next season. I keep telling her that we don't decide for him what sports he signs up for, that we let him decide for himself. He's been involved in soccer, karate, gymnastics, baseball, orienteering, biking, hiking, and canoeing. Personally, I like that last three, but I also get a thrill out of watching him practice karate. When he starts swinging his nunchuks around, it amazes me. He made it look so easy that I hit myself in the head with them three times before I realized that it takes some doing and I wasn't the one who should be doing it. Right now, he tells me, karate is his thing, but that he does want to try football at some point.
That doesn't seem to satisfy this woman and she has absolutely nothing else to say to me. Now, I have to admit to you that I'm not all that easy going. I wish I were. I pretend that I am, but I'm not. Finally, this woman said, "Jill, I know how scared you are of football, that he might get hurt out there, but you just have to get that kid into football next fall. There are even off-season sessions you could ...." I could feel my blood pressure rising.
Sure, I know about the medical issues of post-NFL players and the fact that so many of them can't keep up with the costs of their medical care. I know about the potential for brain damage with repeated concussions that can happen even in high school football. But I knew an experienced canoeist who died in 18 inches of fast water when falling out of his canoe at a bad time and getting his ankle caught upstream. I know the potential for bad breaks in gymnastics. I've seen the bruises my boy gets in karate. He's even come home with a bloody lip when some kid couldn't control himself. So what this woman was saying just pissed me off. "I don't have anything against my boy playing football. It's that he just isn't that interested," I told her. When she started in again, I told her, "Look. I've considered what you're saying. I get it. My boy's built for football. Okay. But I want you to stop bugging me about this. Right now! Or my answer will become a complete and irrevocable 'NO.' Do you understand me?" Somehow, I had reverted to the mom voice I get in the sporting goods store when I haven't eaten and we're running late.
So we were in the sporting goods store the other day. My boy's karate sensei kept telling us that he needed to wear a cup for practice. Somehow, in the scheme of things, I never imagined myself telling some teen aged retail clerk that I needed to check out sizing for a cup. There are lots of things I've done as a mother that weren't all that easy. Don't even ask me about that stomach flu all of us got a couple of years ago when we couldn't keep up with the laundry because everyone was so sick to their stomachs. That was 48 hours of sheer hell. I even dreamed of being swept away in a sea of puke that second night. But this, asking a young man for help sizing a cup, was its own special hell. And of course, my boy wasn't helping me. I had hoped that he could ask for his own nine-year-old self, but no. He was nowhere to be found. After the clerk set me up with the cup that I needed to buy, I went searching for my boy in the rest of the store.
He was looking at the football gear. He's watched some football on television, but without the shirt over it, that gear looks an awful lot like what his character wears when he plays the video game Gauntlet.
"Mom, will you buy that for me? I want to sign up for football. Please, Mom ......"
Thank you for listening, jb
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