Steve's Softball

Steve plays on one of our church softball teams. Because both teams had a bye week, they thought it would be fun to play against each other on Monday night. We thought it would be a fun family night, but of course, my hopes were dashed. The plan was to start at 6pm, play two 7 inning games and then have a picnic of grilled brats and burgers.

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The first glitch was that Taylor's last T-Ball game of the season was cancelled due to rain so they rescheduled their end-of-the-season pizza party for Monday night at 6pm. Thankfully, that scheduling conflict was resolved by Taylor's coach offering to let us drop Tay off early at his house to play with his daughter. He would take them to the party and then bring her to Volga, where Steve was playing.

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Glitch number two was that Anthony and Zeke decided it would be fun to pee in the playhouse in the backyard. They've done it before and gotten in trouble before. So Steve told them that they havd to sit and watch the softball game instead of playing at the playground with the other kids. Which is fine, except that then the person being punished is also me! They kept asking if the game was finally over every time the players would come in from field to bat. So I got to sit with two crabby, hungry kids who wouldn't sit still. Zeke fell off the picnic bench twice and hit his back and his head. Anthony had to go to the bathroom but no one could find the keys to get into the restrooms. Add to that the general naughtiness of two small children who have to sit still for over two hours plus lots of screaming because we were outside and you have the general idea of how I spent my evening.

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Glitch number three was actually funny when I thought about it later. The men played two games and each team won once. Being somewhat naive and also a woman I thought, "Isn't that great! Each team is a winner." Not at all what the men were thinking! They decided they had to play a third game to determine "the champion". Which means we had to stay for another hour and it was already the kids' bedtime, plus they had school registration and pictures in the morning.

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Glitch number four was that they weren't cooking the food until the end of the game. So my children who are used to eating at 5:30pm were "starving" by 8pm. To make matters worse, Anthony was stumbling around clutching his stomach, groaning loudly that he was so hungry he was going to die.

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I gave up at 8:30 and took the kids home.