Warning: Shinpads Will Not Prevent Injury From Getting Run Over By A Wayward Car On The Soccer Field

The past few days have been unseasonably warm, record-breaking warm, and yet yesterday at 5:30 pm – one hour before the first soccer practice of the season – the sky grew black and the rain started to pour.  It was, as always, a festive start to the season.  The practice was held in the rain, the kids warm with exercise, and the parents standing grim-faced under a sea of umbrellas. 

You can probably expect nine weeks of weather-and-soccer-related complaints from me.

I did, however, get a smile out of the warning label on Mark’s new shinpads – shinpads that fit an eight year old boy.  “Warning: no shinpad can prevent all foreseeable injury.  Severe injury may still occur.  Dangerous play should be discouraged.”  Thank you, shinpads!  I appreciate the warning.  I will remember that even though Mark is wearing a shinpad, should he get stampeded by elephants on the soccer field, or should the soccer players decide to scrimmage with chainsaws, the shinpads will not prevent injury.  This is U8 community soccer.  I think he’ll be okay.

I just typed that and had a terribly ominous feeling that I just jinxed the entire season and that something terrible is going to happen.  Given the league’s penchant for never ever calling the game, no matter what awful weather, that terrible thing is probably lightening striking the field or concussions due to softball sized hail.  The shinpad people are right; no shinpad will protect a kid from a lightening strike.  Oh god, is there metal in those shinpads?  Maybe the shinpads will actually be a conductor for a lightening strike.  Why is THAT risk not listed on the package?

Now I’m getting all worked up. 

Also getting me worked up is that, in addition to our basement being repainted, my husband has decided to entirely rearrange it, including new shelving units, turning the office into storage space and the main area into a living room/workout area/office.  This is, as my good friend always says, a good problem to have, a problem of abundance, and it is a much needed improvement in our space usage.  However.  Right now we are at the stage of moving items around and purging items that things are going to be much, much worse before they get better.  The basement is currently a disaster of epic proportions.  It will get better, though, and when it does, I will post pictures, I promise. 

I was reading an article in Brain, Child about a family with four girls and one boy, the boy being the fourth, and not, as some might conjecture, the fifth.  It was an interesting read with regards to gender preferences and something I found relevant ever since I had Jake.  For years, I was questioned about if I was going to try for a girl, something I always found repellant in every way.  I always feel sorry for those kids who were the “wrong” gender (I’ve heard people say, about their own children, “He/she was supposed to be a girl/boy”, which is insensitive and also stupid) and I also think that having two boys is very cool and fun and I’m completely satisfied with my life as is.  I hadn’t heard that line of questioning for a while, since my youngest is in Grade One and after a while, people just stop asking.  But then the other day a salesman, of all people, asked if I was going to “go for a girl” and I was completely startled.  Let me tell you something, if I woke up tomorrow, pregnant: a) I would not be happy, and b) I would have a lot of explaining to do.  It wouldn’t matter if it was a girl or a boy, this would not be a cheerful prospect.  So when the salesman said that, I and my shrivelly, uninterested ovaries just looked askance at him.

I’m not really sure about his salesmanship.  What a strange tactic.  It’s even stranger than my “Puss in Boots” shoe-shopping adventure and my “Wow, you’re way cooler than my mom” pursuit of non-mom jeans, which is saying a lot.