HEALTH PARANOID PARENT
Sporty or spice?
Sports Day: strawberries and cream or knives in the back? Paranoid Parent rises to the occasion in the first of our series charting the social mores of school etiquette
I
always look forward to the summer term. Colds and sniffles have vanished with the blossom, which in turn gives way to green trees,
fresh grass, light evenings and children giggling in the garden. However there is a blot on the landscape which fills me with dread: the sports day. I never liked it as a child. My best effort was the Fosbury Flop but nobody wanted to watch a child falling backwards over a rather low pole in a far-off corner of a large field. And I never got a look in with the teams. In my school, the team captain picked her team which followed a familiar trajectory: the best sportswomen, followed by their best friends. I lost out on both accounts. Now I have children, it has got worse. I
know that on this unavoidable day, I will have to watch them in the same predicament. And to be frank, if I was bad, they are dreadful. So bad, in fact, that I end up running the race with them to try and get that last ounce out of them – and this makes it even worse. I know I should love them unconditionally and I do, but I can’t help wondering sometimes why couldn’t they be just a little bit more sporting. Each year I stand on the sideline, screaming
myself hoarse, with a miserable feeling in my stomach which last year spilled over into tears as I cradled my son – who was far too old to be crying – as he bellowed, “Mummy, why don’t I ever win anything?” I could have gone into a long explanation about genes but I don’t think that was quite the answer he wanted. For a fleeting, betraying moment, I did wonder why I hadn’t taken up the offer of the captain of the first 15 instead of my adorable, brilliant, but definitely ungainly husband – who refuses to turn up, let alone run in the father’s race!
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The father’s
race. There’s a reason why they run it last. Too much testosterone. Far too much testosterone to be contained on a seemingly shrinking sports field. The dads can’t wait. Off come the ties. Paunches out. All doing bendy warm-ups in spiked shoes and ghastly shorts. Spikes at a nursery school sports day. Please. One rather nice father gleefully told me
how one day he had beaten those feisty fathers at their own game. Rushing from an office to do the dutiful race, he didn’t even have time to remove his tie. To be honest, if it had been a straight run, he wouldn’t have had a hope but schools have wised up to this tremendous stampede and conjure up twists, desperate to avoid a convoy of ambulances rushing to the nearest hospital full of exhausted dads. The twist might be an apple between the legs, or a beanbag on the head. Sometimes
the twist is a small child in tow – although this gets rather dangerous. Pushy parents have no compunction. “I dump the child,” one parent told me cheerfully. “Everybody always cheats. I have also found a chocolate biscuit
at the finishing line works wonders in the siblings race.” Back to our out-of-breath
father: the twist in his race was bowling a hoop. As it occurred, he was the only one who could do it, so he won. “Possibly my
finest sporting achievement,” declared the highly successful, something-in-the-art-world fossil. Parents’ races are a great
excuse to get your own back on the mother whose children shine in everything. All year you have been smiling sweetly as they carry off prizes,
book vouchers and cups but the time for that is past. Now we get down to the nitty-gritty. It’s shoes off, sleeves rolled-up and a mad dash for a rope not too far away but which, if you get there first, might just prove that those genes do have something going for them after all. And this is where I mean to shine. “I can
always tell the competitive ones,” said one school registrar to me, meaningfully. And she’s quite right, because I have made up for my shaky sports day start. A dormant competitive streak has finally emerged like a phoenix from the flames and when I run that race, I run it to win, just to prove to all those pushy parents that my genes have got it and they will win, even if it is only the parents race at the nursery school sports day! And I would have won too. What a shame I pulled my hamstring. %
Paranoid Parent returns in the next First Eleven
SUMMER 2010 FIRST ELEVEN 65
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