Saturday, March 22, 2008

So this is what hell must be like

When you last tuned in, Monkey Man had fallen victim to Virus Du Jour No. 1,929 of his life. And just as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared.

Seriously, it was actually kind of freaky. Friday morning he had a very low grade fever and was bouncing all over the place like he was on speed. So Joey took him along to the office (he was one of three people working Friday and the only one with a key so not working wasn't an option) and they had a nice day together complete with a free lunch thanks to Napoleon, the old superintendent that I used to work with on That Big Headquarters Project.

It kind of left me scratching my head. We were so convinced that he had the flu, and then just like THAT it was gone. Not like he feels perfect - you can definitely tell that he's tired this afternoon, but then again he had baseball practice and after being a couch potato for the last few weeks you can tell he's out of his groove.

Which brings me to baseball, or This Is What Hell Must Be Like. Let me start off by saying that the main focus for this year was to let Monkey Man try out as many sports as possible so he could decide what he really liked or wanted to play. Well, everything but soccer since my husband has deemed that no boy of his will play that game. Did I mention that one of the things I love about Joey the most is his open-mindedness? Um, yeah.

So we've done the tae kwon do thing, and the basketball thing - now we're on to baseball. Monkey Man didn't play T-ball last year due to his enslavement to the damn karate studio, so we are a year behind the rest of the Badass kids. Monkey Man was totally stoked to play with all his buddies and has talked about it for weeks.

Pete, who would be one of the Badass Dads, was slated to be the coach. We ended up missing the first practice due to Monkey Man's nose hemmorhage at Wendy's, but the next day I got an email from Pete asking me to call him as soon as possible. As it turns out, they had double the amount of kids than usual sign up for Pee Wee this year - which meant that they were going to have to split the group into two teams. And as luck would have it, they were putting all the kids who played last year on one team and all the rest were on the second team. Which meant that Monkey Man wasn't going to be playing with his buddies.

Pete had tried to talk to the league director and got some vague promise that if they got a few more players we could probably move Monkey Man onto Pete's team. But there were no guarantees. Thursday night, we found out that they were indeed splitting into two teams for real and we were put on that second team. The practice time sucks - Mondays from 5:30 - 7:30, and Saturdays from 1 - 3. Major suckage. I did find out that some of Monkey Man's school buddies were going to be on the second team with him - not any of the Badasses though. I was disappointed.

This afternoon we hauled on over to the school and I sat in my chair and watched the practice. First of all, with it being Easter weekend there were only seven kids there - so I have no idea if there will be enough to even ask for a switch. So I kind of resigned myself to the fact that this is it - we will just have to deal with it and I was prepared for a crushed Monkey Man when he discovered his buds weren't there.

Um, he didn't care. He never even asked. So much for all of my obsessing.

Now, one of the things about our school's league is that they accept kids from two other local elementary schools - either their teams are full or they didn't have enough kids to have a full team. So we have a whole passel of kids and parents that are brand new to the team and school.

And Oh My God. It was like Redneck Hell.

We don't live in one of the ritzier parts of the city proper. And not one of the worst either. But I swear, there were people there that made the theme to Deliverance dance through my head.

We had one mother dressed in her pajama pants. And yes, they were pajama pants because they had freaking sheep all over them.

We had one kid named Jim Bob. I shit you not.

We had one little girl named Trinity. Who had a mullet.

I listened to one woman hollering at someone on her cell phone, "Yer usin' all mah minnits! Git off da phone!" I mean, what are free nights and weekends about, anyway?

These people are literally howling at their kids. Catch the ball, throw the ball, move to the left, move to the right, run, stop...ARGH. The poor kids are so confused that they can't even see straight.

Now, I'm not a total snob. I work in construction for God's sake. I've seen it all, I've heard it all. But damn, we were scraping the total bottom of the evolutionary barrel today.

One thing, though - this will provide plenty of blogging fodder in the weeks ahead. Lucky you.

But at the end of the day, I realized one important thing. The practice went well. The kids, by virtue of not knowing each other well, actually paid attention to the coach and did what they were supposed to do. Well, everyone except for the token dirt-throwing kid. Who belonged to the woman in the pajama pants. Who climbed into a big jacked-up pickup truck with a confederate flag in the back window along with "Git-er-done" and "Smell my face" stickers on back. Figures, doesn't it?

I'm thinking we're going to stick with this team, because if nothing else he might actually learn something. And make some new friends. And I'll have some other moms to shotgun beers behind the dugout with. You don't make friends like that every day!

6 comments:

joansy said...

The part about the confederate flag was a joke, right?

I think you need to see Idiocracy.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

I'm glad he's feeling better.

MamaMaven said...

OMG, not another mystery virus, let this winter be over already! I am sorry about baseball, we suffered through it with the biggest step kid and I wanted to shoot myself, even the kids were bored. You, however, sound like you have WAY better people watching than we did in uptight land.

Mitzi Green said...

well, this is one of the many, many reasons we opted out of t-ball this year. not only did bob totally not give a shit about the game, and not only do i think team sports may not be his forte, but the rest of the team parents were much more db's caliber than ours. 'nuff said.

hotlipz said...

Let me guess, you got some kids from Bellwood?

Builder Mama said...

Joansy - I wish I was kidding. Seriously (and unfortunately) it really was on her truck.

Heather, I can't imagine being in uptightsville and watching that stuff! That must've been something.

Mitzi, DB would've fit right in.

Hotlipz - Nope, no Bellwood kids here. Wonder what THAT would've been like. Glad to see you back, by the way.

Tree said...

Fortunately, N has opted out of t-ball / coach pitched ball this year in honor of soccer. THANK THE GODS.