My son and I love football, we like to watch it, we like to play it. So naturally, when the up coming pee wee football season was offered to us through a friend for a fraction of the price… I was all about it. The weeks prior to the big day my wife and I were pumping him up so that he would be excited about it. This was working like a charm, so much so that we thought he was really going to do it. You see he doesn’t like new kids, he is actually quite scared of new kids and adults for that matter. The very fact that he was excited about it was really cool for me. Finally I was going to live through my son vicariously, I wanted to play football and now my son was going to do it! I was pretty pumped.
The big day came when we were to be at football camp… when something derailed us and we ended up getting there late. This screwed up all my plans, I was going to get him there before practice and let him play on the field… get him suited up and get him really pumped about the pig skin. But no. We were late and all the kids were in the center of the field and we haven’t even had a chance to put on his gear. It wasn’t long before my son started watching all these kids doing push ups and jumping jacks that he started to cry. Did I mention it was a football camp where all the kids from all grades were there warming up? Well it was, and that didn’t help things at all, he was not thrilled to say the least.
When the kids lined up from youngest to oldest the 5 year-olds or the pee-wees were right in front of us as we watched. This didn’t help me because I looked at those scrawny kids and thought my son would kick butt in this league. He was at least 2 inches taller than all of them and they were fully suited. I had a classic case of “my kid is bigger than yours” even though mine could not stop crying.
We left shortly after that because of all the crying and I think I was more disappointed than the boy was and that made me feel bad. I thought he was going to know that I was really disappointed, but I was…. It was one of the worst days of parenthood so far. I guess there is always next year.
What you should do about taking your kid to pee wee football is… don’t take him till he can mow the lawn.