I’ve got a few things brewing that should involve some interesting announcements within the next week or so, however, there’s nothing I’m ready to address publicly just yet. However, this weekend was another flag football weekend (the final games of the regular season, actually) for The Centurion and The Queen. Watching the kids on The Queen’s second grade team, in particular, provided one of those fun contrasting moments on the typical differences between little boys and little girls.
First, to set the stage a bit. The Queen is the only girl on her team. Which is pretty typical, she’s usually the only girl on every sports team she’s on. Side effect of having three older brothers, I suppose. She’s very girly and loves her dolls, stuffed animals, and unicorns, but at the same time she also has no qualms about mixing it up with the boys.
While it’s supposed to be flag football, a lot of the boys on the team wish that they were playing tackle. Over the course of the season they’ve gotten a lot better at pulling flags rather than just pushing (hard) to knock kids down/out of bounds, but they still like to hit pretty hard when they get the chance. Then there’s The Queen. Her idea of playing defense is to backpedal in the general direction of the action, but completely avoid being anywhere near the ball.
Sunday’s game was a bit of a blowout, and by the last five minutes of the game she was out there on defense. The boys on the team were still happily chasing each other down the field. The Queen, however, had completely lost interest in the game, had removed both her flags, and was happily twirling down the field holding her flags over her head like they were ribbons.
At least the parents of the kids on the other team were amused. Also, every coach, and every other parent, knows exactly who I am. It’s relatively easy to be semi-anonymous as a parent of one of the multiple blond boys all roughly the same size, but everyone knows who the little girl player belongs to.
After the game I asked her why she’d decided to twirl with her flags, rather than play the actual game. She told me that she’d decided she wanted to be pretty, but that she still likes to run. Also, she’s decided to play soccer next spring instead of baseball.
I don’t get it.