Jeremy's Aborted Football Career

Jeremy decided to join the football team as seventh grade is their first opportunity for extra curricular team sports at school. The day we picked up his textbooks, got his locker and bought his athletic uniform, the Coach asked Jeremy if he was going to be on his football team. Jeremy looks up at the big, scary, guy with a desire-to-please gleam in his eye and responds ‘YES’ much to my amazement. I felt my inner stage-mother persona begin to unfurl...Playing football never crossed his mind before, (nor mine!) but now he goes to practices 5x per week at 6:40 am and spends 120 minutes per week in the weight room! However this is TEXAS with a capital T and is true football country...you are either a Longhorn Fan or an Aggie and there is no other option. Kids here grow up on football and eat pigskin for breakfast. They have private quarterback coaches and fly to L.A. on Sundays for inspirational talks with NFL greats. Of course on Sundays we eat eggs Benedict, swim in the pool and read all day. But still we are part of the greater Austin community and feel the seasonal excitement in the air. I actually bought a football at Randall’s yesterday imagining me and Jeremy and Peter tossing the skin on the front lawn...

Somehow Jeremy missed getting the play book and does not quite understand the game. But he looks darn cute in his shoulder pads and helmet. His jersey comes down to his knees but he has not tripped over it yet. At this point, I still have high hopes for his football scholarship to an A list college. Though they did have to go to an elementary school to borrow a helmet small enough for his head. And then they had to get a mouth guard that was small enough but would not mess up his dental apparatus. (But we accidentally boiled it too long and it shrunk to pygmy size and cracked. So we had to get another one. Long story). We spent $75.00 on his life-size sports picture in complete uniform with matching trading cards. In my head I was thinking up amusing anecdotes I would need for the Sports Illustrated interviews that would surely follow.

Yesterday was their first scrimmage game against Lake Travis Middle School and I was there bright and early with my lawn chair and Sonic Burger slushy with 3 other moms eagerly anticipating my son’s debut as a football jock. The crowd was screaming, the sun was beating down on us and the game was tied. I have visions of Jeremy running down the field scoring touch down after touchdown, slamming the enemy quarterback and being carried on his teammates shoulders in triumph. I am sitting with Melissa Arnold who knows all the players names, positions, and numbers, has a Longhorn folding chair, and matching visor and whose son started playing Pop Warner ball before he could walk. The excitement builds as the crowd boils in the hot sun and slurps their Sonic Slushies, while texting their son’s private coaches the game scores.

Suddenly, the coach decides to send Jeremy in the game and (as I discover later) much to my horror, he bursts into tears and says he is going to vomit. By the time they get his helmet off him he is hyperventilating and the guys are crowding around him and hugging him instead of chest butting him. I of course think they are just giving him some last minute instructions and am cheering wildly yelling “Go number 2”! Soon it becomes clear there is something wrong as Jeremy lays down on the field and refuses to play. The scrimmage continues (without Jeremy of course) and we kill Lake Travis. Occasionally they have to move Jeremy so he doesn’t get run over when the players run off side. Finally Jeremy returns (upright) to the sides and I can tell his is upset. Apparently he was terrified he would make a fool of himself by running the wrong way and also get killed by the bigger kids. He also thinks the coach is GOD and will sentence him to sports hell for this imagined infraction. I told him just to run as fast as he can and no one will catch him. Clearly I am still envisioning the newspaper headlines as he receives the scoring touchdown in the big game against the state champs. I am treated to a sardonic look that virtually screams “get real mom, I could die” as he sits back down with his team to watch the “A” team play. I feel the Texas euphemisms “Buck up son and hunker down” spill from my lips while the other moms look away in embarrassment.

So I think my brief career as a football mom is over before all the glory began...today he went to practice but is probably going to tell the coaches he is quitting. Which means back to virtual reality sports like guitar hero and Wii tennis. And making origami frogs complete with biographies and girlfriends, individually colored and named. Have we done something wrong here??? His best friend Klee and he play a game called “Evolving Cellular Life”, which consist of wrapping them selves in blankets and pretending to be single cell amoebas that evolve over millennium into plankton and take to the sea. It just cracks them up! Can you see why I’m attracted to the football thing??

The next game is Monday but I suspect we will be practicing flute instead of bonding with the Hudson Bend Buccaneer parents at the Westlake High School field. Damn I was so close I could smell the locker room sweat and athletes foot! I even bought a team visor!

On the other hand he does enjoy the Cotillion...and he can foxtrot quite nicely.

I’ll keep you posted,

Sheila
(AKA Mommy Dearest or Joan Crawford)

Ps. Toulouse, our Bichon-poo is showing real promise though by dancing on his back legs for 10 minutes at a time...I’m thinking maybe Ringling Brothers might be interested in him...