Picket Fence Post

Item #1: Are Football Parents Nuts?

The Eldest Son plays football, so I suppose, by definition, The Spouse and I would be considered football parents. And, from what I’ve been able to discern, the parents watching their sons play Pop Warner football are no more or less engaged — shouting everything from encouragement and cheers, to criticism and frustration at the refs — than are the soccer parents on the sidelines of The Girl’s soccer matches, or the baseball parents on the sidelines of The Eldest Son and The Youngest Son’s epic baseball games.

But a recent column in the Boston Globe makes football parents out to be a little bit more, oh, what’s the word, crazy, than your average, garden variety sports parent. While writer Chris Bohjalian did say that “parents scream at umpires and referees” at more than just football matches, he penned these observations after watching a middle school football game:

“All of a sudden, an attractive woman sitting near me in capri pants and a fashionable hoodie stands up and bellows, ‘Gut check, boys, gut check! Now’s when you have to stick it to ‘em!’ She is, apparently, a mother of one of the young warriors.

. . . Other parents were screaming at their children to ‘hit ‘em’ or ’stand tall’ or ’show ‘em what you’re made of.’ One grandfatherly looking gentleman in a windbreaker barked, ‘Take it to ‘em boys, take it to ‘em! Pop ‘em! Pop ‘em hard!’”

Wondering what it was about youth football that made parents go berserk, he wrote that the sport “appeals to our usually dormant atavistic core” and that he “left the field that Saturday morning feeling a little bit bloodied.”

And maybe, in some respects, he’s got a point. I know that whenever my kids are physically hit or knocked around while playing sports – whether it’s on the football field or during a soccer match — the mama bear inside me wants to rise up and protect my cubs. But I can’t. My only hope is that the refs and coaches watch out for all the children’s safety and that my kids hold their own against the wretched children who would dare to jostle my kin. Although if I were sitting near the woman Bohjalian described in his column, I likely would’ve rolled my eyes.

Item #2: Coming of Age Book

The Girl has asked me if she can read Judy Blume’s famous book, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. It’s fresh on her mind because she and I recently had a discussion about how some girls on her school bus — students in grades 4-8 — have started wearing bras and look mature. I mentioned that my friends and I started wearing bras (before we needed them) after we read that Blume classic. A week later, The Girl and I were in the library and she asked me if she could check Margaret out of the library. I hestiated.

I happen to own a copy of the book but wasn’t sure if the book – which features a girl who’s almost 12 (The Girl is 10) talking to her friends about breast development and periods — would be right for her at this moment in time. I can’t remember how old I was when I first read it, but I remember it had a big impact on me. I told The Girl that I’d re-read it and make a decision.

Although we’ve already had some basic conversations about how girls’ bodies change and about (*cringe*) reproduction, truth is, as much as it pleases me to pass on the fine tradition of Judy Blume books to my daughter, a part of me is sad that The Girl is getting old enough to be reading about such things. But regardless of whether I’m ready for her to be reading this, her peers are already talking about this stuff. There’s no way around it. So I’d rather have her talking to me about bras and periods than getting her info from clueless kids, no matter how it makes me want to grab for the Kleenex.

Item #3: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

At the beginning of the summer, I promised my 10-year-old twins that I’d finally join them in their Harry Potter obsession and read the entire Potter series so that we could discuss the books together. In between reading for work (newspapers, magazines, web sites, books by people I’m going to interview, etc.), I’ve been plugging away at the books, some of them several hundreds of pages in length. (The kids can’t understand why I’m not done yet. What they forget is that, unlike them, I can’t just read all the time and have food magically appear on the kitchen table, the clothing washed/folded/put away and the dishes all cleaned without me lifting a finger, as much as I’d like for that to be the case.)

But Saturday night, while The Spouse was doing some work, I finally finished book 6, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. (No snide remarks about the oh-so-exciting Saturday night events, please.) And I found myself sitting on the sofa in my family room feeling so sad. For those of you who’ve read it, you’ll understand why I was so melancholy. In fact, I was tempted to wake up my twins, even though it was past 11 p.m., and discuss the book’s ending with them. ‘Twas dark, my friends.

I immediately started the last installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and was stunned that, in the first few chapters, there was more death and darkness. I suppose with a title that includes the words “deathly hallows” I should’ve expected that. Now, as I plod my way through the last book, I understand why The Girl put down books 6 and 7 several times, saying that she “needed a break.”

The Harry Potter bug has finally reached The Youngest Boy (7) who just took out the first in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, from the library, even though we own all seven books. He said he wants to read it on his own, like his big brother and sister. Now the only one left untouched by Potter mania in our household is The Spouse, who gets his Potter fix in a CliffsNotes fashion . . . by watching the movies.

Image credit: Barnes & Noble.