Bubba Hoss is going to a professional soccer game. I wasn't invited. That's fine by me. Any game that is called futbal but is not football bothers me. I know, very American. I can't help it. I hope the world enjoys the game, I can appreciate the fandom of it. I just can't get into it and I have no desire to go and watch a game. This is weird for me because usually I'm up for anything. I once drove 4 hours to see a big ball of twine. I can't watch soccer. I don't trust it. It's sending communist signals, I know it. I watch it and I keep wanting it to turn into Rugby. Just pick it up, stop kicking the ball, it isn't natural.
But my kids play soccer and I actually do a spot of coaching. My coaching consists of trying to tell the kids not to look at the airplane and to focus on the ball. They ask me "what ball?" I then remind them that we are playing soccer. I am teaching very important life lessons.
So when the opportunity came up for my son to go to a pro game with his friends, without me, I was more than happy to make that happen.
For some reason Hossmom wanted him to wear his sandals rather than his tennis shoes. I'm not really sure why or what difference it makes. Is it to hot for tennis shoes? I don't know. Is she fostering the hope that he'll be called in to play in the big leagues and go like a Brazilian kid and play with just bare feet? Then he will buy her a house and a maid while introducing her to Beckham? To complicated for Hossmom. She keeps her plans simple and shrouded in mystery. By mystery I mean she never tells me the reasons for the fashion choices for the kids.
I have made it my business to no longer question it. It's not worth the argument. She'll roll her eyes while trying to explain the fashion mistakes I am currently making that will result in the opening of a portal to hell and the destruction of Earth because the boy needs to wear sandals. I will be better off understanding the rules of soccer rather than to get into this with her. So I don't ask anymore, I just nod and agree. Yup, it's the middle of May and that means that it's time for sandals because the fashion magazines have made it very clear that sandals are only to be worn for the next 2 hours in this month. Anything else and you are an affront to the lord, so sayeth Kate Moss.
I have tried to tell my daughter how to handle this. She is 8 now and she is starting to assert her own fashion sense even more. I would say twice a week my wife and daughter argue about what to wear and not to wear. Little Hoss wants to wear a shirt. Hossmom says it has to be long sleeve. Little Hoss says she doesn't want to wear a long sleeve shirt. Somehow this will go to each article of clothing. It continues until I step in and tell them to stop arguing and for Little Hoss to wear what her mother says. I figure I can do this for another 3 or 4 years before it's full on world war 3 with those two. Pre-teen/teen is not going to be pretty. I just want family harmony. That happens when every one shuts up. That's my motto. Be quiet. I like it. As long as she isn't wearing a thong and a tube top, I'm pretty good to go. Apparently, I'm the devil.
Bubba Hoss now has to wear his sandals. He gets up to go find them. He brings them back to the living room. He does a little twirl and sits down.
Then he puts his tennis shoes right back on, leaving his sandals right on the floor. I watch this whole thing happen. I'm speechless. I don't know what to say. He went and got his sandals like his mother asked him. He sat down with them. He put them on the floor next to his feet. Then somewhere in his little brain he forgot about them. I don't know why.
It is possible that he was working some mathematical problem in his head, some unproven theorem. He must have stumbled upon the answer but it was so mind blowing that he forgot what he was doing. All he knew was that he needed something on his feet. If I put a loaf of bread next to him, 10 bucks says he would be wearing toast to the soccer game.
I see Hossmom about to lose it. She can't explain this and I know that her eye doesn't twitch because she's in a good mood. But at the same time, how can this not be funny? How can this not be exactly my boy? He's been doing stuff like this his whole life. I no longer want to explain it, I just want to be a part of it. You realize that he will be the death of us all, right?
He'll be near a red button one day and someone will say "never push this red button." 10 seconds later he will push it and all of a sudden we will be living in the book "The Road." If you haven't read that book yet, you should. It's very good and very depressing and about a man and his son. His mom's not around because she couldn't take the fact that her son didn't put sandals on. But dad is still there. But he dies, very sad.
I tell everyone that there is no more time, we are going to be late. I tell Bubba Hoss to get in the van, time to go. He has no idea that I just saved his ass. Hossmom still can't speak because she's not sure what happened. I can see her trying to put the chain of events into some sort of frame work that will make sense. That won't happen with my son. I find that he doesn't have to make sense, much like the fashion choices that I don't understand.
It's better for me to just keep the family harmony, to whisk away the small troubles and just get things done. Hossmom will try to understand what just happened but won't be able to because there is a secret to it. You can't understand it, there is nothing to understand. What you can only do is accept it and hope that one day, when he's sitting next to your hospital bed and you ask him for the remote, he doesn't think you mean to turn off your ventilator. It has a red button.
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