My Son, the Football Player

The thing I dreaded, prayed wouldn't happen, tried to deny its reality, is here.

My 15-year-old son, the high school freshman, is playing football. Actually, he hasn't played yet, but he has been to practice every day save one since school started last week, and today, Labor Day, while the rest of his classmates are hanging out and chilling, Matt is spending five (!) hours at the practice field because today not only will he run and do drills and sweat like a pig, but he will get his practice pads and jersey. Let the games begin.

I guess you may have figured out I'm not the biggest football fan. In truth, I'd be hard put to say I really liked any sport Well, maybe the girly ones like ice skating and gymnastics. But since I've had a son I've been to t-ball, baseball, soccer, basketball, and lacrosse games over the past ten years, and I've learned if not to exactly enjoy but endure. And I find watching both basketball and lacrosse, probably because they're fast, to be quite exhilarating. Not that I really understand anything about staying too long in the key or offsides or anything else technical about the games, but watching Matt run down a court or up a field with possession of the ball, cheering gleefully when he scores, watching his self confidence soar, now that I can get excited about. I've stood on the sidelines of chilled, foggy fields early on Saturday mornings and rested my butt on hard-as-rock bleachers in remote, stinky gyms on weeknights to watch my boy play, and I wouldn't have missed a minute.

But football. In high school I pretty much avoided going to football games as not only was I a nerd, but I was a theater nerd, and my various chorus, dance, and musical rehearsals seemed to coincide with the games so I was spared. My father watched the occasional game on TV, but I could tell it was more background noise than something he cared about. My parents were baseball fans, but not me. I stayed within my arty boundaries and let others be the cheerleaders.

In college, football games were the big social events on the weekends, and I took them for what they were. The tailgate parties beforehand were spectacular, and if I spent the game watching the crowd not the field, scoping out the boys, well, who knew? Downs and rushes, linebackers versus fullbacks—it was all Greek to me. I knew enough to cheer when our team made a touchdown, and the band played the winning song (at Stanford it was and is "All Right Now"), and I had a great time. Beer helped.

Then I married a jock who played high school and college football, and football was on the television or the radio all fall until Super Bowl parties where I hung out in the kitchen and chatted with the other wives. But now I will have to actually go to football games. I will have to listen to my husband and my son endlessly dissect plays and players afterwards, and I will pray that my poor boy (my muscled, stocky football guy) doesn't get trampled or broken or concussed or worse.

It's only freshman football. Maybe he won't go out for JV next year. Or maybe he'll love it, and by then, maybe I'll understand the game. Here's hoping.