they put the psycho in psychotic
the more i observe parents, the more i realize what i want to be like when i am one. actually, to be precise i learn what i do NOT want to be. in a family full of teachers the crazy parent stories never end.
lately though, the event that's been influencing me the most is junior high basketball. my little brother has played almost all of the 9th grade teams in the area and i've noticed an interesting pattern. certain schools seem to breed horribly obnoxious parents. you know the type - yelling at the ref, the players, the coaches; screaming obscenities; jumping up for high fives every time their team scores. but my absolute favorite are the ones who don't clap for their kids when they lose the game. i would suppose they also take them home and beat them with a rubber hose.
on saturday my brother's team played a particularly offensive school. they were good ball players, they were beating us pretty badly (which almost never happens). in the last 9 seconds of the game, with a 30 point lead mind you, their coach was screaming at the ref to have my brother taken out of the game for being too aggressive. yeah, after his players had been elbowing him in the face. then the guy had his boys step out of the game for the last possession. our poor guys just looked silly and embarrassed. to make things worse, i visited with my brother about how the players behaved. (to preface this, my brother is the only white kid on his team and the team they played had only 1 or maybe 2 non-white players.) the other team had been using racial slurs and calling our boys "fucking niggers". when my brother stepped in to play, one of the kids said to him "thank God, finally another white guy."
needless to say, my family was outraged when we learned the last part. my dad called the athletic director of the school today and visited about the behavior. he made a point to tell the director that it was a white parent who was offended by the language used by his players, hoping to make it hard to blow off the complaint as a racial one. who knows if anything will actually come of it, but i'm glad he did.
but back to my point: that kind of attitude from parents deeply worries me. parents who are so incredibly aggressive and irrational about junior high sports instill poor sportsmanship and completely unbalanced priorities in their children. not to the mention the bigots who give their children such a warped view of the world. so now i'm making a conscious decision to maintain my intelligence and reason after i pop a few out.
lately though, the event that's been influencing me the most is junior high basketball. my little brother has played almost all of the 9th grade teams in the area and i've noticed an interesting pattern. certain schools seem to breed horribly obnoxious parents. you know the type - yelling at the ref, the players, the coaches; screaming obscenities; jumping up for high fives every time their team scores. but my absolute favorite are the ones who don't clap for their kids when they lose the game. i would suppose they also take them home and beat them with a rubber hose.
on saturday my brother's team played a particularly offensive school. they were good ball players, they were beating us pretty badly (which almost never happens). in the last 9 seconds of the game, with a 30 point lead mind you, their coach was screaming at the ref to have my brother taken out of the game for being too aggressive. yeah, after his players had been elbowing him in the face. then the guy had his boys step out of the game for the last possession. our poor guys just looked silly and embarrassed. to make things worse, i visited with my brother about how the players behaved. (to preface this, my brother is the only white kid on his team and the team they played had only 1 or maybe 2 non-white players.) the other team had been using racial slurs and calling our boys "fucking niggers". when my brother stepped in to play, one of the kids said to him "thank God, finally another white guy."
needless to say, my family was outraged when we learned the last part. my dad called the athletic director of the school today and visited about the behavior. he made a point to tell the director that it was a white parent who was offended by the language used by his players, hoping to make it hard to blow off the complaint as a racial one. who knows if anything will actually come of it, but i'm glad he did.
but back to my point: that kind of attitude from parents deeply worries me. parents who are so incredibly aggressive and irrational about junior high sports instill poor sportsmanship and completely unbalanced priorities in their children. not to the mention the bigots who give their children such a warped view of the world. so now i'm making a conscious decision to maintain my intelligence and reason after i pop a few out.
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