No, this is not a post about how many hours I spend coaching my children in baseball or soccer. No this is a humble confession. My children are doomed to be sports illiterate. This afternoon I took Bug to scouts. We talked about the upcoming campout. We played twenty questions with the scouts for a while. Then all of the scouts but Bug and one other headed out to the field to play some football. It was a nice day. The scouting part of scouts was over. Okay. Let's play for a while. Bug says, "I don't want to." "What? Come on, it'll be fun." "I don't like football." "What? Come on, the other scouts are playing, we're all going to play." "Dad, its too violent." "Come on, it'll be two hand touch." Here the other scouts jump in, "Two hand touch? No! Its tackle." "No, I'm not going to explain broken arms to parents." My son, "Dad, I'll play but only if we play tackle." Then it dawns on me. My son has no idea what he is talking about. He's never even played one scrimmage. No idea that tackle is more violent then two hand touch. How can a boy in America not know that tackle can hurt? I once (at about the age of Bug) threatened my procreative abilities by being tackled right on top of a buried sprinkler head. We ended up playing for about a half hour. Bug had a good time. (I had an aneurysm.)
The good news is, I'm no jock. I feel no guilt about this realization. Bug has other experiences that point him squarely toward nerdhood. Just like his father. Now, admittedly, I was pretty popular in High School but if you distilled the sum of my characteristics, I'd end up much more nerd than jock. He'll like making music. (I don't consider someone musically inclined when all they know is the personal details and lyrics of one rock group.) Probably drama. He's already been in chess club.
I'd be more lost if he was a jock. I'm just glad that I can relate to him when he says he doesn't want to play football.
What a little stud.
2 comments:
Howdy there.
As a nerdy mom, it was interesting reading about this issue from a nerdy dad's point of view. I'm married to a jock so seriously, our kids could go either way.
What's funny is my oldest son has serious nerd tendencies and my oldest daughter's going to be exactly like her dad.
Yep, it's true. He is a little stud. And he will turn out wonderfully because he has you for an nerdy father...oh, I mean example. (We're ignoring the fact that mom is happily nerdy too.) I say, embrace the geekdom.
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