I was wrong about sports

Many years ago I read the novel Jack Gance by Ward Just. It tells the story of a young man who goes to Washington, DC with idealism and a desire to make change, but the political machine slowly wears him down. He eventually gets sucked in by that machine that rolls over anyone who tries to push it off its course. If there is a lesson in that book, it is that you either conform or you get out. 

Or the machine crushes you. 

I've never been good at conforming. It was one of the reasons I stopped attending Catholic church in my twenties; I would attend out of a sense of obedience/shame and would leave with a massive anger-induced headache every time. My mental health won out, and I got out. 

I couldn't change the church, so I left. (Eventually, I found a church that allows me to be me where I can attend without feeling like my head is going to explode in rage.)

Last night, after a conversation with D, it occurred to me that I have been wrong about this whole sports thing ever since N was in middle school. 

I've written once on this blog about my failed sports "career" as a kid, but it wasn't even failed. It never began. What I realized even then was that sports was focused on results, on winning. People were a means to an end, not an end in themselves. That is what sports is; to try to change it would be like trying to change the spots on a leopard. 

But for me, people have always been more important than winning. 

In a real sense, sports rejected me, and so I rejected sports back. Some people react differently, I suppose. They continue to love a game that didn't love them. They continue to want to be part of the team.  There is an entire field of sports psychology, and I can't even pretend to know all the iterations of people's feelings about sports, winning, losing, self-esteem, etc. But I imagine that for every kid for whom sports gave a leg up, there are as many or more for whom sports let down and so they found something else that they feel a meaningful part of. 

I can find parallels between why I left the church and why I rejected sports: both were an exclusive club. If you didn't meet certain requirements or qualifications, you were out. Or you might be part of the team, but you weren't really part of the team. 

And, of course, there is a need for requirements. I want there to be requirements for lawyers and doctors and mechanics. I don't want some idiot willy-nilly sawing on my brain if I have an aneurysm. 

But religion and sports seem different to me with sports being far below religion in importance. The state of my conscience is way, way, WAY more important that tossing a ball around. 

[I mean, when I really think about it, there is a whole lot of angst/drama/anger/money spent over tossing a ball, and it seems like something Samuel Beckett should have written a play about. But he stuck with religion, which is also often absurd.]

Eventually I found a church that has an open-table. This doesn't exist in sports at least not that I have seen or found yet. The goal is, above all else, winning. 

And my conversation with D last night made me recognize that I have been wanting sports and asking sports and demanding that sports be something it is not, and I'm in the wrong for that. 

My view about sports seems the exact opposite of what sports enthusiasts think. I see it as exclusive and full of drama and half-truths and a whole lot of mind-fuckery. I cannot reconcile "We are a team; let's work together" with "We want to win and will isolate/ignore you in order to do that." Those same ideas are at work in sports, and they seem, to me at least, to be irreconcilable. 

Perhaps the problem is in the openness of joining. "Come join the team" is often followed by "But we're only going to play the same people over and over again." 

For some people who love the sport, I guess that is good enough. 

For me, it has never been good enough. (And gives me a deeper appreciation of women who have said "F you" to the Catholic church's refusal to allow women to become priests.) If you are good enough to be on the team, you are good enough to play. And if you're not good enough to play, coaches should have the guts to cut people, even if it makes the players sad (as it did me when I was a kid). They are going to be sad and/or angry anyway, but especially if they are being told "We love you; we're a team" but then actions are different. 

[As much as I felt rejected when I didn't make the A, B, or C basketball teams as a 10-year-old, it wasn't as bad as what I would have experienced if I'd made the team but was too shitty to actually put on the field/court.]

I truly try to understand sports dynamics, but after seven years of watching my kid play a sport (and I only watch when my kid is actually on the field), I have gotten nowhere. 

Another thing I suppose I've always known about sports but never specifically focused on is that it is a power imbalance that sometimes makes people do things they wouldn't otherwise do. I understand now how Larry Nasser was able to abuse girls. Parents may have spoken amongst themselves, may have wondered or questioned or felt uncomfortable or been downright angry. But to fight and fight and fight means their child loses something valuable to them. Their child would lose an opportunity, and their child would be stuck in a quagmire of uncomfortable. I have seen this dynamic play out in real life so I get it now. 

Parents may be angry as hell and speaking loudly and proudly amongst each other but quiet as mice when the coach is around. I both love and hate that I cannot just be silent, that I can't just let it go, but what I really hate is that other parents allow me to speak out without speaking up with me. I understand why they don't, but I hate it anyway. 

Even parents whose child plays a lot put up with stuff they despise so their child will continue playing a lot. 

I'm fairly sure someone who loves sports would read this and call it a major case of sour grapes, and they aren't wrong. But if I were to care about sports at all, I would care for the underdog most. I would care for the kids who aren't the all-stars but who just enjoy playing. (And yes, this is what my kid is like, and so I know I have that bias, but I would have that bias anyway based on who I've been my entire life.)

How much shrieking and gnashing of teeth would occur if coaches decided to bench their all-stars and only play the other kids? How quickly would those same parents who think everything is great when their kid plays a lot suddenly find themselves angry and frustrated? When we're in a privileged position, we can  quickly call someone else's frustrations sour grapes. "They're just angry because their kid isn't playing much," and they are right. If they put those shoes on their own feet, they would feel the same. 

They just don't have to wear those shoes. 

As a rule, politics doesn't change and religion doesn't change and sports don't change. The power imbalance won't allow it. And if it happens, it takes many, many, many people working together.

Somewhere along the line, I forgot that I cannot change the animal that is sports. It can bend me if I allow it, but I cannot bend it. 

People and their dumb natural consequences

When N was little, maybe 3 or 4-years-old, I told her to put her coat on when she went outside, and she refused. Threw a duck fit. 

I could have fought her, wrestled her into her coat, but I just let her go outside and then enjoyed myself immensely when, with teeth-chattering, she came back into the house a short-time later because she was freezing. 

This is now how I feel about people who have refused to get vaccinated for COVID. 

I am a skeptic by nature, hence the reason I have never fallen head-first into a pit of religious faith or absolute belief in anything. (There is some irony here when those who put belief above all else must experience with their every sense the pain and suffering of COVID infections themselves before they will understand it is a serious fucking problem.)

I have reached a point where I absolutely do not have any compassion for people who have remained unvaccinated and are now sick. The biggest problem I have with them is their utter selfishness that is now keeping health care workers exhausted and delaying hospital care for people who have other non-COVID life-threatening issues. 

I don't pretend to know what Jesus would think, but I hope he would give them a good lecture and maybe flip a table at them. 

Recently a parent explained to me why she is not making her child get a vaccine. I did not ask; she offered this information willingly and unprompted, and I tried to keep my eyes from bulging out of my head. 

She said, "She's old enough to make her own choices."

I think I said, "Oh," because, again, trying to keep my face in check. 

I didn't give my children a choice because if they do get COVID and require care I AM THE ONE WHO IS GOING TO FORK OVER THE MONEY TO PAY FOR IT. 

I AM THE ONE WHO IS GOING TO HAVE TO PUT MY LIFE ON HOLD AND BE AT THE HOSPITAL.

I AM THE ONE WHO IS GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF MY CHILD IF SHE IS HOME SICK. 

I AM THE ONE WHO IS GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE MY CHILD TO VARIOUS DOCTOR VISITS SHOULD IT COME TO THAT. 

Besides my child who gets sick who will suffer most, I AM THE ONE WHO IS GOING TO SUFFER. 

And why would I choose to suffer in this way and be inconvenienced if I don't have to?

My senior does get to handle lots of her own stuff. She gets to pay her own car insurance. She gets to decide where she goes to school and what she wears to school and how she handles her schoolwork and what she wants to eat as a snack when she gets home. 

But as long as I'm the responsible party for her health care, she doesn't get to avoid a vaccine that has the ability to make COVID a largely preventable disease. 

What makes this statement by this parent even more mind-boggling is that this person's child plays on a sports team. There's no I in TEAM, or that's what sports-minded people say. And yet, not getting a vaccine could put the team and their games in jeopardy. Focusing on the "I don't want a vaccine" means the "TEAM could be harmed."

I am tired of being angry. I am tired of watching people do the dumbest possible things and reap the harshest consequences from their dumb choices. And I am mostly tired of knowing that because of their dumb choices so many other people are suffering. 

The relief (and joy) of ending things

Endings aren't nearly as exciting as beginnings.

But they are immensely freeing. 

I started to think about the "relief of the end" today after taking M to his 6th-grade orientation. His entry into middle school means our family has said "So long" to the elementary school we'd been a part of for something like 12 years. 

It did not make me sad for him to move on. 

Perhaps some of this lack of sadness was because we didn't have the "traditional" promotion ceremony or any of the before-times banquets and things, although I generally dislike that kind of stuff so I don't think I felt anything besides relief that we didn't have to do it (one of the rare positives of COVID). 

Last weekend when I saw local church members doing a service project at schools to spruce them up in anticipation of school starting, I didn't feel sad that I wasn't pulling weeds at the elementary school with these volunteers as I had in years past because I was the school's "Beautification Chair."

This lack of sadness made me think, too, about the freedom of releasing myself from connections with people I didn't really know or like or have any real reason to be connected to. 

Yes, I know this has been something I have mulled over here before. 

It is my blog....so I chew on what I want. 

Let's blame it on the obsessive part of my OCD. 

I think what can and does happen to moms who spend years not working outside the home is that they sometimes confuse their own needs with their children's needs. As my children made friends, I became friendly with many of my children's friends' parents. Some of them I truly became friends with, but the vast majority were never my friends. We didn't socialize outside of our children. We don't really know anything about each other. I would never dream of calling them if I were in a bind. 

But sometimes I have mistaken them for more than acquaintances.

Even though I am well beyond the angst of teenager and young adult life, adult friendships or acquaintanceships or connections can still be a little confusing, especially in our social media world. 

It occurred to me that one of the most wonderful things about my children moving on is that I can give myself permission to move on as well. 

I do not have to stay connected (however loosely) to people I truly don't know or admire or like or care about. 

In many cases I no longer remember why we were connected, to begin with. 

(That doesn't mean I wish them ill, but I want to be connected to people I admire or find funny or who make me think. I want to be connected to people who don't say or do or post stupid things unless they are being sarcastic or ironic in which case I probably like them. I want to be connected to people who I feel are kindred spirits.)

And there is a special category for people whom I don't see often but who make me feel happy when I am around them or when we do speak. I won't pull my mask up and put my sunglasses on and turn the other way down the grocery store aisle if I see them. These are the people who I think would probably come to my parent's funeral or at least send me a card in the mail to let me know they were thinking of me. 

Something remarkable I also consider is how much I have changed from the time N started at the elementary school to the time M left. 

I went from "friending" everyone and wanting to know everyone and be involved to being extremely selective about who I friend (and downright delighting in unfriending people). Maybe it is because when N started elementary school I was a stay-at-home mom of three children under 5 who had absolutely zero time for myself or life beyond my children. Whatever friends I had were going to come through my kids or I simply wasn't going to have friends. 

The ending of things in terms of M's schooling has provided me some happiness I didn't expect to find there.