Acting Without the Drama

Winter Ball

January 31, 2009. Today was my youngest son’s first flag football game of the winter season. He was invited to be on the team by his coach from last season. We were excited for him to get involved.

Here’s my problem…can you really call it winter ball if it’s 80 degrees out and you have to wear sunscreen? Just as a side note: I hate Santa Anas.

Our team won the game (did I mention that this coach led our team to an undefeated season last fall?) with a final score of 14-0. The game itself wasn’t all that exciting. The other action on the field, however…

You don’t really expect a fist fight out of a bunch of 9 year olds.

There was a player on the other team that had thrown a bunch of late hits. After our coach had told the refs (hereafter referred to as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber) about it multiple times, he finally put one of our biggest guys on him. This kid also happens to be the funniest player on the team.

So, our player, in order to protect his teammate from another late hit, held the other guy. He shouldn’t have done it. He knew he shouldn’t have done it. He didn’t, however, expect the sucker punch he got. The fight lasted all of 5 seconds, after which the other player was thrown out of the game. He was pretty mad about it, too.

The other team’s coaches and parents put up a huge stink about the fact that our guy wasn’t ejected, so Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber caved and told us to take our guy off, too. His reaction was priceless. He had a huge grin on his face.

Same basic parameters for both players. Completely different reactions.

I think that a good portion of the time we get all bent out of shape over things that aren’t that big of a deal. Sometimes, they can even be something that will end up being really positive.

I can only imagine what was going though the mind of our player. Probably something along the lines of, “Awesome! Now I can tell everyone at school that I was ejected from my football game!” Whatever it was, though, he chose to face it with a smile.

I decided today that I just whine too much. I would like to be more like that player.

Have I mentioned that he’s the funniest one on the team?

A positive attitude really does make a huge difference to the way that we experience our lives.