Once again I was on the yellow line edging the football field, the same yellow line this annoying mom with an inferior camera ran me off of earlier because, as she said, “It’s against the rules.”
“I just want some good shots of my cousin, no reason to get your panties in a bunch” I said as her shrill voice assailed me from behind.
“Excuse me?”
“Jesus age, lady. I’m not worried about what line I’m standing on at a midget football game” I say, not bothering to pull my eye from the camera’s viewfinder as I talked.
“Well, they can punish you if you go over it” she huffed.
“let em, let them come punish me. In fact, go tell them to yell at me” I said. Then, mumbling under my breath, “It’ll be great writing material.”
“My husband is the coach!” She declared as if her ultimate authority had been instantly justified.
I started thinking of how many sporting events I’ve been at in my life, professional and otherwise, and who was really an authority about what mattered at theses things. Then I started to calculate the total unpaid attendance at this event. I remembered I just had a bullshit session with one of the volunteer refs about the Indian’s season. That even though my relatives introduced me as professional baseball player, no one believed me. I just told some kid trying to sell my raffle tickets for a booster club raffle to beat it. This was small town sports, with small town rules for small town police who had no concept of how small they were. Being the wife of a the coach to a 9 year old sports team was right up there with the right hand of God.
“Your husband has bigger things to worry about” I said, nodding at the scoreboard deficit. I took my last shot and walked away.
“Goodness,” I said, landing back on the flat metal bleachers next to Bonnie, “Some parents take this stuff a little too seriously.”
“It’s their kids honey, of course they do.” She said, eyes on the field. “I hate football.” She added.
“Well. I hope I don’t take it this seriously when I’m a parent. I hope I don’t attack other parents about how close they are to foul lines.”
“Yeah, I would have a problem with that if you were all super-sports-psycho-dad, screaming your anal retentive gibberish out at our son in hopes you could live vicariously through him.”
“I would not yell gibberish. But, I’m used to dad’s screaming at their kids during little league sporting events, that’s like lamb and tunafish; they go hand in hand. Course, I could never do it, just couldn’t. Not after 25 years of playing this crap. But,” I let the words hang, “that doesn’t mean you couldn’t become Nazi mother hen. What if you changed and I had to start dragging your claws out of the other woman at our kid’s sporting events?”
“I would never do that.” She tipped her shades down at me as I spoke. “Nev—er.”
“You think that mom who jumped me thought she’d be arguing with a complete stranger over foul line proximity when she was our age?”
“She was probably a cheerleader that got married to a high school jock hoping, no, praying she’d pop out a couple of athlete kids so she could once again be a full time cheerleader. Except now she gets to enforce fan rules while she’s doing it cause she’s team mommy too. Two whack-job powers rolled into one fruity cake of jilted values. It’s a dangerous thing—women who do nothing but have the power to criticize what everyone else does because their husband does something. I hate woman like that. And I hate football.”
I stared at Bonnie for a minute, not sure if I should say, “yeah, me too” or “you can tell all that by looking at her?” I went with the later.
“No,” said Bonnie, “I’m just spitballing. But, you know, I could see it happening.”
“Yeah. I can too. I think we should start a club for people like that. An obsessive, mother hen, Nazi-mommy-fight-club, Hosted by Pink.”
“Mmm….” Said Bonnie.
We stared out at the kids colliding in their over sized helmets, fully envisioning mommies beating each other with lawn chairs and pack drink coozies.
“Did you get any good shots?” Bonnie asked.
“Yeah. I kept her distracted long enough. Here, look.”
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