The first thing I noticed was his shoes. They were moccasin styled- striped pink and green. A sort of shoe-slipper hybrid you would expect to be worn on a granola head. The green stripes really made his green polo pop, so much so that his collar did the same thing. “Popped” collars are a culture shock to me. I always thought that it was a look that only Johnny, Soda Pop, and the gang from Grease used, much less yuppie, old dads at a fall ball lacrosse game. But there he was, in all of his popped collar and high waisted, steam-pressed jeans glory. And we were the lucky ones who sat behind him.
“He does forty push-ups before each game so he can play with a certain finesse.” Yes, I am certain that Carter (the unfortunate son of the yuppie dad) does push-ups in hopes of finesse. As if with every repetition he completes he thinks, “I really hope the rest of the guys notice my finesse,” or “I can’t wait to wear the tee shirt with the sleeves cut out so I can show off my finesse.”
And the game begins.
I’ve never been to a lacrosse game before and I was most surprised at the violence. The boys ran up and down the field as they pummeled one another. No, seriously, they just kept wacking each other with sticks. I feel as if some of the players forgot about the rubber ball they were supposed to be chasing. And that was how the group of parents sitting on the sidelines separated each other.
A woman under an umbrella with red hair that appeared to have the texture of straw, screeched “hit him harder, hit him harder” as a Kennesaw Mountain High School Mustang fought a Woodstock High School Wolverine for possession of the ball. I was confused as to which player she was giving parent-of-the-year advice to, but then when the Wolverine smacked the Mustang on the head she was in search for a referee.
That was when the rather violent mother and the yuppie old man with a son that is the “utility tool of the team because he can play every position in lacrosse” found each other and began talking smack about the other team. The woman didn’t know who the opposing team was and Carter’s dad knew that the team was good, just not “state-championship caliber” like their boys. As if the lacrosse game was a cosmic joke, Carter, the golden boy who has “plans of going to West Point” and “puts red bull in his cereal” was caught twirling his lacrosse stick.
Yes, the yuppie dad’s son stood on the field and twirled his lacrosse stick. The dad’s cover up? It was fall ball lacrosse, and since “any boy is allowed to play” the others simply cannot compete to Carter’s standards. So Carter twirled his lacrosse stick in boredom. It is such a pity that the game wasn’t challenging enough, Carter worked for all of that finesse for nothing.
But as the parents wondered who Carter belonged to and for once the dad wasn’t willing to admit that he was the gene pool that created that stud of a boy, the players stampeded down the field; the ball was in the Wolverine’s court. The yuppie dad, in an effort to remove himself from his baton twirler of a son, yelled for Joey to go deep. I guess Joey ignored the yuppie dad’s requests because the dad looked at the other parents (how dare the witty comments he makes not be heard by everyone) and said, “I wish they wore shock collars so we could control them.” That sounds like a swell idea, really. Why would we want the team to listen to their coach when they have screaming parents on the sidelines? Yeah, that makes sense.
At the beginning of the game I was excited. I knew my brother was pumped and I couldn’t wait to see him play. And then as I waited for the game to begin I read my book and enjoyed the autumn weather. I laughed when I noticed the shoes of the man standing in front of me and I thought of him as a goober and then turned my attention to other things. If he spoke softly or if I sat on the other side of the field he would have been nothing other than the guy with the funny shoes and this essay would have never been written. But as he talked (so loudly that reading was out of the question) I began to learn an incredible amount about the man I didn’t know and his family I never met. I don’t even know what Carter looks like, but I do know that were he was going to college was a running joke in the family because the college of his choice seemed to change every week. I do know that his father wants him to go to West Point and that his sister, Katie, has her act together. I knew that the man worked for an airline and he didn’t like the new boys that “just got out of college and seem to know everything” and all he wanted to do was “show up, fly the jet, and leave.” I suddenly found myself with enough information to perform a quick search on Facebook and steal his identity; not that I would want to have the identity as the goober old man who has the ability to enrage those that don’t even know him, but I could if I wanted to. I turned to my parents and found that I was not the only one who was more irritated than amused by this man. I was a savage beast on the inside, I promised myself that I wouldn’t care if the Wolverines lost every game left in the season, I just couldn’t let them lose this one, I couldn’t bear the thought of yuppie old dad leaving in victory. But alas, I suppose the goober knows what he is doing after all, for the Kennesaw Mountain High School Mustangs win, dashing all of my hopes of watching Carter’s dad eat his words. And that was that, the game was over, the dad could now update his status and have other yuppie parents comment on it and tell him what a grand dad he is, and I left a touch more jaded of the world than when I came.
