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.