Angry Snowball

I was at my son’s soccer game with his mom, two brothers, and my parents. He didn’t start. Not a big deal. The league is about player development, not winning and losing. However, after a few rounds of subs, he wasn’t going in.

The fans sit on the opposite side of the field from the players. My son and I make eye contact. He looks at his leg, points to his knee, and then looks back at me. I return an annoyed and quizzical look. He starts crying.

The whistle blows for halftime, and he hasn’t stepped on the pitch. You can call fooey, but I don’t interfere with the boys and their extracurriculars. Therefore, it was unusual for me to do what I did, which was to march towards his bench and beckon him to the side of the field.

I own every Scrubs season on DVD (sans season 9…I don’t want new characters 170 episodes into a show’s tenure), which gave me the credentials to diagnose my son’s knee injury. I performed the Ray Romano Check (RRC) (feeling the good knee and then feeling the bad knee to see if there was a difference). He passed the RRC and had zero reaction (no twinge, no pull away, no yelp, no cry, no nothing) to me messing with his bad knee.

I believe that he tweaked his knee during warm-ups. But, I believe that his tweaked knee was good enough to play on.

Not wanting to make a scene, I mosey back to the parent sideline, but I am angry. I am really angry.

Angry Snow Pebble

My first layer of anger is based solely on the situation. I am angry that he isn’t playing. I am angry that we are all there to support him, but there is nothing to support. I am angry that I love watching him play and can’t. I am angry that he is letting his coach and teammates down.

Angry Snowball

This is 9-year old soccer. There are 14 more games. There are no ACC scouts on the sidelines. It’s not a big deal. I know all of this. My anger is compounding, because I know that I am getting angrier than I should.

Angry Snow Boulder

The final anger layer is complicated. I recognize that I am getting too angry, which will lead to me being too hard on him after the game. But even though I know I am going to be unnecessarily tough, I won’t be able to stop myself. I can see the future, but I can’t prevent it, and that makes me the angriest.

I am a perfect example of the foundations of pre-crime methodology from Minority Report. I see my future, but even with that knowledge, I am unable to stop it from becoming reality.

The pebble is his fault. The snowball and boulder are my fault. But, the problem with this situation is that no matter the derivation of the anger, my son is the target, and that’s not fair.

My hope is to think more like Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell). Maybe the more times that I predict the future, the stronger I’ll be at preventing it.

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