Team Player

The fathers of my son’s teammates keep ignoring me. I walk up to one pair and say hello. They grunt back “hey” and then wait silently for me to move on. I hear them start back up their conversation after only a few steps. Two more pretend not to see me. Another father, at halftime, stressed by our team’s dire predicament, shakes his head curtly when I say, “This is no fun.” He doesn’t want to hear it. In fact, the only man who responds to me at all nearly jumps when I greet him. He comes over and introduces himself, assuming we are on the same team, and asks me which boy I belong to. I don’t have the heart to correct him. Of course, it’s not that cut and dry. Both the men who keep me out of their circle make efforts later; and the dad who shakes his head at me is generally grumpy, and I should have known better to engage him at such a stressful moment. Though I am not sure the other man being Black does or does not have anything to do with his friendly response. He may have been surprised that a White man he doesn’t know is going out of his way to say hello. (I felt so disenfranchised by the other men that when he looked over at me with an open expression, I turned to him out of solidarity.) Perhaps I am just too sensitive for this crowd. It has been a long drive, it is hot, our team is getting its butt kicked. Maybe these men are just acting like the middle-class American White males they are. Maybe it’s me who doesn’t know his role, his boundaries. Thinking back on it, the two guys do say something to me as I walk back to my car. “You missed it,” one says. They are grinning. It seems that Avery slipped on the cement trying to kick the ball and fell straight on his butt. They are smiling at me. “Man, it was some kind of fall.” I laugh along with them, but inside I am quaking.