Field Day

Nothing says, “Get ready for 3 months of your kids staying home this summer, watching your TV, eating your food, and destroying your house” like Field Day. In this town, it’s the last major school event before the end of the school year, and boy is it a pleasure to be at.
The best part about it this year is it’s raining. Not sprinkling, not misting, it’s actually raining. Big drops. My two favorite things are being outside, and watching some sort of sporting event, so I actually get to enjoy some sky water while I’m at it. Every person here has an umbrella and a video camera, and no one’s paying attention to who they’re poking with those umbrella edges. Why are you videotaping this? Who is ever going to watch this crap?

I don’t enjoy sports. Superman has his Kryptonite, and this is mine. I don’t like participating, I don’t like watching, and most hardcore sports fans really irritate me. In high school and college I called them White Hats, although not to their face, because they’d probably kick my ass. Since I don’t care about sports, I don’t know anything about them. When I’m out and about, and the discussion turns to the game, I have to just quietly nod my head and hate them silently. Sometimes it’s fun to pretend that you’re Bruce Wayne, and the Bat signal just went on, and you need to get the hell out of there.

“So anyone catch the score last night?”
“HOLY CRAP, I HAVE TO GO!”

It doesn’t always work. Even though I know everything, this lack of knowledge has bitten me in the ass a few times.

Check this out.

My wife was on bed rest for four months one summer when she was pregnant with our third child. I spent a lot of that summer taking my 2 oldest to a lot of events that she would normally either join me, or take my place altogether. When people asked where she was, I would usually lie and say she was shiftless, just to see what people’s reactions were. I once told another parent that my wife wasn’t around because her cervix was weak. That’s how I said it, too, not that she was pregnant and on bed-rest due to complications from a weak cervix, it was, “Yeah, Jen’s at home, her cervix is weak”.

So one Thursday that summer, I find myself needing to get ready for my son’s baseball game, and I don’t know anything about what I’m in for. I can sit there and appreciate what my kids are doing on the field, but that’s about as far as it goes. After dinner that night, I put my son’s baseball costume on, and we headed to the field. When we got there, the parents were having an absolute freak out because there was nobody to coach first base, whatever that is. So Coach Lubbock and the moms decide that they’re going to ask the parents in the audience if they can help out. Well, that was just about the last thing I wanted to do, except maybe eat glass, so I did my old trick of Sports-Avoidance.

I pretended to be on my cell phone. I actually had a fake conversation on my phone the entire game just so I wouldn’t have to talk to, or interact with those people. I should have won a goddamn award for that performance. When I felt I needed a break, I’d hang up the phone, and put it in my pocket. If they looked like they were coming over to ask me, I’d jump, as if my phone just vibrated in my pocket, and starting talking to nothing again.

I know what you’re thinking. You think it’s just awful that I wouldn’t volunteer my time to help my son’s team. Not true. You see, in order for me to be a first base umpire, they’d have to explain to me what to do, which would ultimately necessitate me to learn something. I didn’t go to the field to learn, I went there to clap when it looked like my son did something right. The time it would take to explain that nonsense to me would extend the length of time that we were at the field, and I’m pretty sure that all of the other parents in the audience wanted to get the hell out of there as soon as physically possible. They didn’t realize it, but I was actually doing them a favor.
I’m sure I could sit on some couch and go way back into my childhood to figure out why, but I frankly don’t really care. I could never understand the logic people had in trying to get me to play with a ball.

“Hey you’re tall, why don’t you try out for Basketball?”
“Which one is that now?”

My mother did everything she could to try to get me “involved” in something other than the computer or TV. When I was about 7 my father dragged me to a softball game once, and I sat behind home plate, which is a great place to sit, especially around drunk softball players. I caught a ball in the face which knocked me out, and pushed 4 of my front teeth down my throat.

Then they signed me up for town baseball. At the first rehearsal, we were practicing swinging the bat, dropping it, and running to first base. I just threw it directly into the field and almost killed a kid.

Sailing was no better. If I was Aquaman I could control the seas, but no one could really explain to me how the hell to sail into the wind.
They made me audition for cross-country, which I ended up finding out is just running. One of the first days I was on that dopey team someone spit on me from the bus. Awesome. I eventually got kicked off the team for walking instead of running, and once I got a car ride, that was the end of my running career.

Tennis was no better because I actually wasn’t allowed on the team. They gave me a jacket, and told me that I could go to all the meets, I just couldn’t play. Just what I want to do, watch.

And yet, here I am. In the rain, getting poked with umbrellas, watching another sporting event.