Meet The Parents

With the girl’s high school season underway our team held its traditional “Meet The Parents” get-together last night. What a trip to the zoo that turned out to be!

We started off by going round the room introducing ourselves, stating which team our kid was on, and giving a little background ‘color’ information. Geez! Emily Hotshot’s mom should get a special award for the amount of times she was able to use the phrase ‘only freshman on varsity’ in a sixty second time period. For some reason that seemed to provoke Sonia Ovalooked’s mom into a bit of a tirade about “flaunting yourself” but it all settled down when they both agreed to hook up in the parking lot after the meeting to sort things out.

The too-much-information award goes to the wacko father who talked about the ‘healing power of sports’ and his hopes that being on the team would help his daughter get over her bi-polar disorder, anorexia and suicidal tendencies. I made a mental note to cancel the spaghetti lunch I was planning to host for the team.

The goalkeeper’s mom made a nice appeal for team unity, asking for an end to the name-calling that went on last year, and saying that she hoped her daughter’s senior year would be memorable for all the right reasons. I thought it was quite touching although I’m not sure that her cancerous, fat-ass, bitch of a daughter can follow through.

When it came to my turn I decided to just play it straight and let them only have the pertinent information such as the fact that my daughter plays travel for the most expensive club in the state, has a personal private skills trainer, and that we purchased a spot on this year’s ODP roster for her. I think the silence that followed is a clear indication that I had made my point although it was a bit dis-heartening to see the Athletic Director shrug his shoulders when the varsity coach asked him what ODP was.

Regretfully, by the time we got to the freshman team no-one seemed to be listening and the head coach was overheard saying that the didn’t know we had a freshman team.

Randy Ogler, President of the Boosters, started his presentation by welcoming his new wife to the board in her position as Treasurer. His ex-wife’s position as registrar remains vacant at this time, but his first wife has returned as social secretary. He asked for nominations for the registrar’s role but for some reason none of the fathers seemed willing to let their wives volunteer. Randy did ask for a few moments of silence to remember the previous treasurer but personally I thought it was a little bit tacky to be asked to bow our heads to honor someone who took his own life after being charged with embezzling $115,000 of our cash.

Finally it was the turn of the coach to lay his words of wisdom upon us. He made a big thing of reminding the girls about the school’s policy on alcohol and how, with prom, graduation, and open houses coming up this is particularly important. Poignant words from a man who will be back to riding the bus with us to away games this year following the loss of his driving license for a DUI conviction.

Yes, it was quite a night. Sometimes I think we are the only normal, well-adjusted family in the Midwest.