Ah, and this is where we diverge...

So far, there have only been a couple of instances where I've found myself completely unable to connect with the football folks on any level at all. Of course, we haven't even had a game yet, so who knows what that means. Both of these situations have left me pretty jaded toward the football community, and more confident in what we're doing with our overall philosophy toward life.

First case:
This little guy we'll call Dexter. (No, of course it's not his real name - I could use his real name because there are about 6.8 million of them in the South, but that's okay. I like Dexter.) Poor kid cries. A lot. He's not used to this, he's never played sports before at all, and we've had record-breaking heat. He's probably 30 pounds overweight, but I think they weigh on a curve down here, anyway. His parents seem to be accustomed to his crying, and he gets about as much empathy from them as, say... well, none. He's a sweet boy. He cries and cries, but he gets out there and tries. Gotta give the little guy credit.

His Dad was a little encouraging. His Mom turned out to be one of the women I had avoided studiously at the football camp. You know the kind, her kids are harder on her than any other mother's children, her labor was more damaging/difficult/dangerous/etc. than anybody else's ever, her husband is a bigger slacker/less observant/stoopider than any other man on earth. These women, I Avoid. Like. The. Plague.

So, last week, Dexter is practicing, but he's favoring one arm. And he's crying. (He hadn't cried in two days!) His mother starts telling me that he'd hurt it the day before (Monday, I'd missed that practice), but that she'd made him keep practicing, using the argument that he'd "just sprained it real bad". She'd told him not to show the coach. And Tuesday morning, she had made him write his name, and he could do it, although he cried the entire time and "he couldn't eat", but she sent him to school anyway. I looked over at the boy, and could see from several yards off that his wrist was bigger than my ankles are 8.5 months into pregnancy! And there was a huge bump. My immediate thought was, "That kid has broken his arm!" As I turned to ask his mother just how stupid she really was (not normally something I'd actually do, but I'd reached a saturation point with this woman over the last two weeks), the boy walked up to tell his mother the coach had called him over and told him to go get it x-rayed. Right. Now.

She was a little put off that they had to go to the hospital. I don't know if it even dawned on her that she wasn't treating her child very well. Or that, perhaps, she was wrong. She wasn't in a hurry to pack it up, and made him carry all his gear. We haven't seen him since, and today was weigh-in. Zorak took James, so I don't know if Dexter made it for that, or if he'll be out for the season. It breaks my heart to think this little guy is going to live with the attitude that, somehow, it's his fault. With that woman, it always is the kids' fault or the husband's fault. I'll be sorry to see the little guy go, but not so much about not seeing his mother.

Second Case:
Ball-Carrying Positions. In this league, a player cannot weigh more than 85 pounds to play a ball-carrying position. The point being, if you're *that* much bigger than everybody else on the field and you have the ball most of the time, you'll be the cause of nightmares, broken bones, and possibly some post-season bed-wetting among the slight-of-build crowd. We have a couple who came in over 100#, so they obviously won't be in ball-carrying positions.

But I learned yesterday that one little boy lived at the coach's house this past week. The first week of school. He's 8. And he lived at the coach's house for "intensive dieting and physical therapy," so that he could "make weight". In seven days, this boy went from 91 pounds to 85 pounds. Now, lest you think I just "don't get it", I do. I remember the guys in high school walking around in sweat suits for a week before a weigh-in. I remember the guys taking protein shakes and power bars for wrestling weigh-ins. This isn't a completely foreign concept to me (although I do find it ironic that it's perfectly acceptable for a young man to do this to himself, when we acknowledge how damaging and dangerous this practice can be for young ladies -- but that's another topic for another day). I remember one guy getting sick and winding up in the hospital from taking diuretics, too.

But these kids, the ones I'm talking about today, are 7 and 8 years old! And it's not as if the coach and this kid's parents did this for his overall health and well-being, to help him develop a healthier lifestyle. No, he has two all-you-can-eat meals awaiting him "anywhere you want, after you make weight". Because who cares what he weighs once they've got him approved for a ball-carrying position?

There's more to life than football. And it's obvious that some people do not get it. I know some of you out there will disagree with me, and that's fine. I'm not going to back down from my position that children are not pawns. Children are not tools to be used. If this is all about the game, then why are we putting kids through this? Last I checked, a "game" doesn't involve this kind of manipulation in order to "win". And really, who's winning in these two cases? Nobody. Certainly not the children, that's for sure.

This time, I'll be the one to say it: we definitely aren't from around here.

Kiss those babies, and go easy on them. You only get one shot at this.
~Dy