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Soccer Mom Slapfight

Brawling parents and the kids who tolerate them

And what relatively innocent Hot Wheels-lovin' 8-year-old lad worth his burgeoning masculine salt wouldn't enjoy seeing his sneering, knuckle-dragging parental units march up and down the sidelines at his weekend soccer game, snarling angry bullets of instruction and forehead-slapping reprimands along with the occasional words of gentle encouragement?

All the while they're sucking Coors Light from the family cooler and talkin' trash with the rival parents and secretly wishing they were lounging around at home, drinking themselves into casual stupors while watching 10 hours of football and QVC on DirecTV.

Indeed, what hapless pre-teen wouldn't be prouder'n a dog rolling in dead squirrel to observe said parents working themselves into a vicious lather near the end of the game, all serious anger and bilous vitriol regarding where one of the coaches was standing during the all-important final shootout?

Escalating finally into a full-blown fistfight, Hey ya prick bastard don't be yellin' at my kid or I'll tear your head off, Screw you pal you wanna make somethin' of it, C'mere ya fat jackass I'll knock you into Connecticut, slap punch brawl rage rage rage...

But that's essentially what happened a few years ago - fully one dozen suburban New Jersey Cro-Magnons who from all indications probably shouldn't be breeding in the first place (an easy cliche but such fun to repeat), thrashing about the scruffy grass like hairy elephant seals in heat as roughly 30 young boys from both teams look on, dumbfounded, vaguely sad and embarrassed and forever stamped with the true meaning of sportsmanship - violence, rowdiness, bickering over idiotic infractions. Hey! Just like the pros!

And arguably the whole point of mildly aggro youth sports is to teach discipline and sportsmanship and competitive instinct, and hence it's obviously far too much to ask that parents and kids alike be allowed to simply enjoy the energy of motion and the recreation and the sunshine, the joy of RWY (Running While Young), the pleasure of easy Saturdays and the simple bliss of playing a popular team sport for the fun of it and because it's good for your heart and your body and your family. Heaven forfend.

Hey man, I played soccer ( or,Football here) as a happy whitebread youth and I remember the adrenaline thrills and the yelling and the grass stains, the bruises on the shins and the bloody raspberries on the thighs that meant you were playing the game correctly; I remember harmless bouts of warlike energy on the field and tempestuous debates over fouls and suspicious penalties and occasional swaggering boyhood aggression.

But Jesus with a restraining order, had my folks ever devolved into actual fistfighting on the sidelines I think I would've run and cowered in the corner of the world and immediately applied to another family for asylum. When whiny, violent parents act dumber than their kids - next on Springer.

Save that for the Scottish.

See, on one side we've got a stack of Death Fighters and Duke Nukem's and Mutant Massacre II video games, a pile of "Natural Born Killers" and "Predator" and "Starship Troopers" DVDs, topped off by a good 10 years of lousy ultraviolent television.

Over here, one authentic dumbass brawl between ostensibly ethical adults, live, in person, with real blood and genuine small-mindedness, as their kids watch. You pointing fingers about violence in the culture? You aiming to root out the Big Bad Causes? Take your pick.

Learn more about this author, Mark Morford.
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