Role Play

Recently, while I was walking laps at the park with a friend, I watched a twenty-something guy attempt to kick a football.  He failed miserably.  So I said, “Want me to teach you how to kick that?”  Obviously he thought that the lunatic mother whose children were playing ten feet away must be full of it, but he threw me the ball anyway.  I punted it to his friend, then walked away. 

At the time, I did not realize why I felt the need to kick that ball.  But I psychoanalyze myself just as much as I do everyone else, and now I get it.  Sometimes I play my role, and sometimes I just have to deviate a bit.   

Boys will be boys and girls should be little ladies.  This concept gets me emotionally charged and makes fundamentally exhausted.    

I am not a fan of that particular kind of role playing.

My daughter is one of the best players on her basketball team.  Her coach is very patient and great with the kids, and I appreciate that he is a volunteer.  But he does something that irks the hell out of me.  He calls my daughter, “Beautiful”.  Of course that does not seem like something negative.  But when he says, “Alright, Good Shooter” to one of the boys and a second later says “Nice job, Beautiful” to her, it bothers me.  Maybe I am being ridiculous, but I think that if she is out there kicking the boys’ butts she should be “Good Shooter” like everybody else.  I cringe when, in a game, he tells her teammates to “throw it to the girl”.  I am one of those obnoxious sports moms who yells and cheers for her kids, so when I used her name while she was dribbling down the court, some kid’s father turned to me and said, “I thought her name was ‘The Girl’”.  If I had not been annoyed before, that pretty much sealed the deal.  

Yes, she is in a co-ed league full of boys, but she plays hard and does not even know the concept of special treatment.  Unfortunately, she is quickly learning it by default.  The other girl on her team is not a good player, and the coach frequently picks that poor girl up mid-game so that she can attempt a shot.  Of course, he does not pick up the boys who are not good players.  Girls who struggle in a room full of boys get special attention.  I should know better than to expect anything different, but that does not stop me from being irritated that my daughter is learning this lesson. 

As for me, I have two younger brothers who played football.  When I was little I wanted to play football, too.  My dad was adamant that it was not going to happen.  Not one to take "no" for an answer even then, I had to know why my brothers got to play and I did not.  The answer was, “You’re a girl.  You might hurt yourself.”  So, when I countered with the fact that my brothers could hurt themselves just as easily, I got an explanation that involved the female anatomy.  That was not okay with me, especially since I had yet to develop those particular parts.   

Later on, every time my dad and brothers would play a pick-up game of basketball, I wanted in.  I have no idea how many times I heard, “You can’t play, you’re a girl.”  Sometimes I would get so mad I would cry, further proving my girlness.

Little did they realize that their blocks would provide a wide-open playing field for my own daughter.  She gets to play anything she wants to play. 

Every time she kicks a boy’s butt at something, I smile. 

And every once in a while I kick a football, just to break out of my role.