When Parents Fight

I get a perverse joy out of parents behaving badly at children’s sporting events. 

I don’t watch the news, but whenever I’m out in public and walk by a blaring television set, and I hear the phrase, “A little league game got ugly...” I perk up and stop like a dog hearing a dog whistle. I’m not sure what that it says about my sense of humor, but I love it when two (or preferably several) middle-aged blowhards start flailing at each other over perceived slights. 

The story is always the same: The kid doesn’t catch a ball, and some opposing parent applauds that. A weird phenomenon of narcissism by proxy kicks in. The child on the field who dropped the ball is an embodiment of the parent’s inner dreams, and that parent is certain that they will become the star athlete that they never were. When parents fight, I don’t think they’re fighting for their kid’s “honor”, but for their own fragile sense of self. The fighting blowhard feels like they’re the one who had dropped the ball, and they can’t deal with that.

I wish these kind of dumb fights would happen at a kid’s chess match.

“Wooo! Good move. Way to take control of the center of the board...”

“He’s castling! He’s desperate. Don’t stop Aidan!”

“How DARE you say that to my kid! I will KILL YOU!”

Then two balding and bespectacled intellectuals start wrestling, their corduroy Carl Sagan blazers scratching each other. They have to be pulled apart by blue-haired librarians.

“I assure you this isn’t over!”

“Indubitably...indubitably...”