Domestic Disturbance

My desire to be present the next time Futbol's best take aim at its ultimate prize was put to the test this weekend. No, I did not wait in a long line winding around the block for tickets to the match between Chivas and San Luis. No, I didn't tune into the Univision broadcast of America defeating Morelia. It was a little lower level than that. I was on the field for most of Saturday and Sunday watching FC RTT battle its way through pool play to capture the consolation championship. Who is FC RTT? It's not the Futbol Club of Rotterdam or anything like that. It's my 10 year old daughter's soccer (yes, extremely apologetically, we call it soccer here)team, the Rockridge Tough Tigers. Cute name, right? It could be alot worse. They've gone to the mattreses with such formidable foes as the Sugar Plum Fairies, the Soccer Sisters, and the Purple Dolphins. Luckily, overcast skies reigned supreme, so I wouldn't leave with the souvenir "racoon tan" again.

As I sat with some of the other soccer moms and dads, I overheard and participated in a number of colorful conversations ranging from "which middle school are you sending your kids to?" to "have you shopped at the new Trader Joe's? I won't go their again, its just too crowded!" to "I can't believe that Weinstein was given that appointment. He's such a right winger and there's no way we can have someone like that on the bench!" It's always very amusing to see how the conversations vary from season to season, and sport to sport. Our soccer league is one of the "hill" leagues (as opposed to being one in the "flatlands"), so its more of a wine and cheese crowd, and I mean this quite literally. One year, a group of parents on our team saw to it that each practice and game was not without a thermos full of vino and an assortment of cheeses. This is in sharp contrast to the baseball league which is decidedly a "flatlands" crew. The conversations are far less pretentious and often take place loudly from one end of a cell phone, while the wine and cheese might instead be some fried catfish and wing drummettes from JJ's.

But I digress. I was beginning to talk about the conversations that took place around the field. This was the wrap-up to the soccer season, and while I enjoy soccer (well, actually I enjoy futbol considerably more)this season seems to have lasted an eternity and I would welcome its completion. Many of the usual teammates that my kids had played with over the last several years were scattered across several teams and as a result, I didn't get to pal around with the same group of parents on the sidelines. Putting it mildly, it wasn't nearly as enjoyable socially as in years past. The kids were still entertaining on the field, but the whole atmosphere changed. My son's team had a real interesting collection of parents. Many of them were alot older than I and have managed to make it a little further up the proverbial hill than I have at this juncture. I'm firmly rooted on some of the flattest real estate in the whole of Downtown at present, but if it's any consolation, I am on the top floor. Sorry, let's see...where was I? Oh yeah, conversations. Like I said, I had and heard alot of them this weekend, but this was perhaps the most amusing:

Eli's Dad: "Phew! What a day!" (totally exasperated and out of sorts. Ordinarily a little more stiff and buttoned up, on this day, he was more..um...casual, in his grey cotton sweats, some sneakers and some sort of obscure alternative band or oddly-vernacularized watering hole t-shirt, perhaps it was a spot in Berkeley of which I was unfamiliar, hair slightly disheveled, and looking like an un-made bed).

I smiled and chuckled, acknowledging his ice breaker and clearing the way for some conversation. "Is that right?" I said, or something like that, but I fear that I may have been more likely to utter that sentence in THAT way, in the more relaxed confines of the baseball venue, maybe following it up with "...like that there...,". And that's when he dropped the big one.

"Aw man, these kids are wearing me out...our Nanny is out today," he said looking at me as if the two of us were stranded in the Arctic Circle without our jackets, demanding that I give an agreeable, knowing, and commiserating nod. It took all that I had to keep a straight face. Was he kidding? It was like a guy sitting at field level on the fifty yard line and complaining to me that "Man! Those Raider-ettes are just too pretty from here. I can't concentrate on the game," as I strain to see the action through my binoculars from my seat on the Moon. I nodded anyway, smiling like Malcolm McDowell with eyelids pinned open in A Clockwork Orange and mouth stuck as if in spasm in a Jack Nicholson Joker-esque smile. I know a little about alot of things, but having a nanny or something resembling a nanny to help with my kids is something I know nothing about.

"I think Nanny's are like the Holy Grail. You can't live without them," he went on.

Okay, let's try to be fair. In addition to Eli who I believe to be about 7 or 8, he had another little guy about 5 years old riding his bike around and climbing up fences and a 3 year old that would wander, but not too far away from dad. They looked like they could keep you busy and maybe be called a handful, but they were just kids.

I don't know what Eli's dad does for a living (we never got to that)but I have an idea that its nothing where his hands get dirty. I was actually surprised to see him wearing the cotton sweats with the sneakers on this day, as he has often opted for the penny loafers with some variation of this ensemble in the past. Perhaps he has an admin that does things like get people on the phone for him or keep his coffee cup full, and maybe even opens his mail or sends his faxes. Who knows? All I know is he was hard pressed to get any genuine sympathy out of a guy who had put the D in domestic that day cooking breakfast (and you should've seen last night's dinner...check "Destinations" for that later this week), doing laundry, and ironing the kids clothes and getting all of us out the door for an 8am church service. I put the C in chauffeur, as I would drive the kids home to change out of their church clothes and into their soccer uniforms, to grab a bite to eat between games, home to change again and shower again before taking them to a team ice cream party to celebrate the victory and the end to a great season. I also put the U in the "Are you serious?" that I kept concealed behind that mask. I feared he was going to tell me that Eli had spilled the rest of his grande, half caf,soy Caramel Macchiato before they left the house(the one that he usually drinks in peace while Annie the Au Pair corrals the little cowpokes) and that I might have to give him a hug or something.

Not to say that I'm Super Dad or anything, but I just have a hard time seeing the difficulty in whipping a couple of kids into shape. As a captain of industry, surely you have to be a leader of men that probably act like they're six years old half the time. What's the problem? You were a kid once, you know how kids think. One of my college coaches often uttered the following: "I been 21...but you ain't been 45!" That statement made me laugh and I wanted to dismiss it as the ramblings of an old fool when I was that 21 year old, but it is so true. He's already done everything that I'm thinking about doing, so there will be no surprises. I know my kids will eat 17 donuts each if I leave a plate of them in front of them, so I don't do it. Given the opportunity, my son will knock his sister over if it means he gets to go first or be first, so I'm not surprised and try to head it off before it happens.

Parenting is not easy. There is no handbook. But we all have either experienced or observed some good old-fashioned parenting along the way, so its not totally foreign to us. Sure, there are many variations, but the ends justify the means. Dad might let the kids chase the skunk,let them get sprayed because they need to learn that valuable lesson and then hose them off and make them sleep in a tent outside for a couple days. "It'll be fun...like a camping trip." Mom, on the other hand, might just keep them from going outside at all until they're 23 to ensure that they don't get so much as get a hangnail.

Even if I could afford such a thing as a nanny, I wouldn't. I don't quite see the point of letting somebody else deprive me of the odd experiences that my children are sure to bring my way. I can tell a much better story about how my kid threw the makeshift cloth-napkin football a little too close to the wedding cake and then tried to re-write the bride's name with her little finger if it was on my watch rather than hearing about it from the au pair. I don't need to watch family oriented sit-coms with laugh tracks. My kids are at the height of their hilarity during prime time.