My son the parrot, and Stereotypes proved right

My son's last day of Flag football was yesterday, and being that my hubby's out of town for work, we had to have our assistant coach step up to the plate. I'm probably the only one who notices it, but there is a super distinct change in listening skills with the kids when an alternate Coach comes on. My hubby tends to leak authority where ever he goes, and even from the first moments of him coaching, the team was well aware of who held that authority. This other dad just doesn't seem to hold it. but I digress.

I wanted to talk about sonny's last full game of flag football for two reasons. #1 being how my son stood up for himself, and #2 being Mr. coulda-made-it-to-the-big-time coachie of the opposing team.

So without further ado:

#1. My son has always had issues with standing up for himself, he would never hurt a flea. He's somewhat an emotional child as well, which has always given me little pangs of grief for how his school upbringing will be, and  the torture he'll go through. We all know about bullying, and we all know that the bullies who do the worst damage are the ones that we never even suspect to be the bullies. Besides, my son's never even been able to take a hit, he got pushed by a 3 year old, (even though this kid had ham hocks for arms and a mean left hook) and he just fell down and then walked away from the kid without saying a word. We had to show him how to stand up for himself, and this has been an ongoing thing, what to say, how to react, that it's okay to show emotions but not to give in to them.etc...

So last night, during pre-game warm up, they were practicing catching the ball. Sonny and another child both got their hands on it, and wrestled a little. Meanwhile, another kid, lets call him bob, runs over to the wrestling pair, shouts at sonny that the other kid had got it, and then, even though the two on the ground were giggling and not really fighting over the ball, bob goes over to sonny, yells that he never got the ball, why doesn't he just quit now, he's not very good, and then bops him on the head, not just a little bop either, he reared up for it.

And what does sonny do?

Well, he gets up, no tears, and goes over to bob, and give him the whatfor in Mommy speak.

Example: How dare you hit me! Don't ever do that again! That was just stupid! You try that again and you won't like what happens next!.

So I guess we need to work on what to say when someone bullies you, but I'm so very glad that he had the courage not to just lie there and cry, but to get up and get back in that kid's face and tell him it was NOT okay to do that.

#2. We all know or at least have heard of the Guy who played Football in his highschool years, perhaps his college years, was very good and had hopes of going pro, but just wasn't quite good enough to get there? The guy who stays up late at night to draw out plays, and relive old days, watching each football game that's on t.v. with a renewed fervor, knowing all the mistakes and coming up with alternate plays that 'Surely would've done the trick'? The guy who has all the sports packs on tv, in HD, The guy who has tsn.com and espn.com on bookmark, the guy who makes sure to answer all the tsn polls even if they're just on Jersey colour?
The guy who still wears his college t-shirts to anything and everything, even if they're massively sweat-stained, holey, and don't quite fit anymore?

Well, that's the guy who coached the opposite team. I wish I had a picture, it was extremely stereotypical, like he looked up all the symptoms for a failed NFL/CFL player, just so he could look the part right...

Sorta like:

or maybe like:

you get the picture...( he was a fantastic character, btw, too bad they changed him up for a chick...)

Anyways, he spent the entire game yelling at his team about Angles, ANGLES!, checking his CFL regulated clipboard, blowing his whistle, and sweating profusely.

It was Classic.

And by the way, I told hubby about this, who is sort of a minor version of this type of guy, but with baseball, and he told me that they don't do angle training until highschool or later, whatever that means. But attempt to teach a 6 year old this, a 6 year old who is still only able to aim inside the toilet bowl about 60% of the time, seems kinda pointless to me...