Flag Man

I love Luca’s soccer games. I view it as my own personal HBO comedy hour. I spend the entire time working out my new sports related material. “Good job, kid whose name I don’t know!” is my bread and butter. I also do quite a bit of shouting out non-soccer cheers. “Touchdown!” is my favorite.

The other parents hate me.

A couple Sundays ago, we were setting up our lawn chairs and I was doing some light crowd work (“It’s not about winning or losing. It’s about not losing by 13 like last week, know what I’m saying?”) when our coach approached.

“I need a parent volunteer to be line judge.”

Everyone got really interested in their phones. I raised my hand enthusiastically and the coach gave me a yellow flag.

“Basically, you raise this whenever the ball goes out and you say which team gets to do the throw in.”

Cool. Cool. They whistled the start of the game and the kids commenced with kicking each other in the shins.

Suddenly, the ball whizzed out of bounds. I raised my flag and realized I had no idea which team had kicked the ball out.

I immediately and confidently gave the ball to Luca’s team. Both teams simultaneously said, “Really?”

The dads behind me said, “Really?”

The coaches said, “Really?”

I ignored everyone, acted all serious and said, “Silver ball! Let’s go.” I shoved the ball into the nearest Silver jersey and tried to move past my obvious mistake.

The game continued and every time the ball exited the field of play, one of the kids would let me off the hook and say, “I think it’s red’s ball.” I would nod like a judge sentencing a man to the electric chair and say, “Red ball. Red ball. Definitely Red.”

No one seemed to care that I was the worst line judge in the history of volunteer parents. Mostly because Luca’s team got absolutely creamed. But I was glad when the final whistle blew and I returned my flag.

After demonstrating my amazing marching band flag dancing moves for all the parents.

Cool Work

When Elijah was little, he would say, “I want to be a sea animal helper when I grow up.” Over the years he’s stuck to this life goal with little variations like, “I want to be a ticket taker at the Shedd Aquarium.”

My career has given me a lot of awesome experiences (I’m writing this on a flight back from Dubai) and hilarious adventures and affords us a very Evanston lifestyle, but I lost sight of my own sea animal helper dream somewhere. I want Eli to hold onto his.

A few Sundays ago, I had to run into the office to check in on a hard working team who had burned the whole weekend trying to solve a particularly vexing advertising problem. Eli begged to come with. His number one reason was so he could get out of going to Luca’s soccer game. I tried to talk him out of it. He’d be bored and he’d have to sit in my office while I worked with the team in a conference room. But he preferred sitting in my office watching YouTube over giving his brother an ounce of morale support.

We got to the office in record time (the streets were free of idiots working on a Sunday) and checked Eli in at security. Seeing the look on his face, I remembered how easy it is to forget big office buildings are kind of cool. There were automatic doors and elevators that make your ears pop and giant windows overlooking Lake Michigan and absolutely massive bathrooms.

As I worked, Eli discovered the company’s free candy and the creative department games. He spun around in expensive office chairs and drew “Eli is great” on one of the many white boards.

The weekend team had done marvelous work and blessing it took far less time than I thought. I brought Eli to say hi to the team before we headed home. Eli was stunned. There was leftover Chipotle in the corner, and a bevy of other snacks and gum strewn about. The team itself was a collection of hip young twentysomethings. One of the guys had a ponytail! Oh, and get this. They had Nerf guns!

We walked to get a post work smoothie and Eli said, “Your job is the coolest.” I tried to explain that we were working on a Sunday, which was the opposite of cool. Eli nodded as he ate the free sucker from the 24^th floor candy jar.

Maybe he can make ads about sea animals when he grows up.

Teams

A week or so ago, we attended another Luca soccer match (Game? Pitch?). Luca was coming off his nasty flu, but had accomplished 2 straight days of faking symptoms to get out of stuff. So we thought running in 90 degree heat for 60 minutes would be healthy.

During one of the breaks where the referees remind everyone to tie their shoes, Luca asked his coach to sit out. The team was getting pummeled, so the coach said sure, why not? Luca draped his piping hot, sweaty body over me and panted. Yuck.

I told him to go sit by his team.

“No. I don’t have to.”

I could barely breathe under this 7 year old ball of humidity. “Yes, in fact you do. Be a teammate.”

The idea of team didn’t register with Luca. I guess I can understand his confusion. Until this point, the concept of being part of team didn’t exist in his single player X-Box, single twin bed, single bathroom toilet world. When you are seven, the world revolves around you. Who cares about other people, let alone the other 8 kids sweating on the soccer field?

Rather than calmly explain the merits of being part of a team and rah rah, I totally yelled at him in front of the other parents. Luca told me I was mean and began crying as the other parents slowly scooched their beach chairs away.

My lecture must have had some effect beyond emotional abuse, because Luca suddenly and passionately became a Cubs fan. Last week he immersed himself into every televised game. He hid in our living room, headphones on, and stared at the streaming broadcast like it held some deep secret beyond Geico commercials.

One night, I found Luca perched on the edge of our bed watching the Cubs again. I told him this game was special because if they won, they’d be in the playoffs. I explained this was the best time to become a fan and not during the hundred other boring games.

As we watched the game, Luca peppered me with questions. What did “Clinch” mean? How many wildcard teams were there? How many divisions were there? What signal does the ump use for balls and strikes?

I told him I needed to check my computer for some work stuff and then suddenly became an expert in baseball. Thanks Google!

The Cubs won and Luca leapt up, screaming. He ran around the house shouting, “Cubs win! Cubs win!” For kid who had seen a grand total of 3 games, he was delightfully diehard.

We then went outside and played catch, like a father and son team.