Field Day: The Road to Hell

Ready for some high-energy fun, I instead watched a cliche unfold during an event at my daughter's school-wide field day recently. The cliche: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The event: a game called cupid's arrows in which three children stand between two rows of children, who are armed with small foam balls, and toss up hula hoops. The child on the side who passes his ball through the hoop receives the honor of replacing one of the children in the middle who had the hula hoop. On it goes as the center children are pelted with foam balls and clunked on the head with their own rapidly descending hula hoops.

Field day is organized mayhem during which the parents are invited to come along and see firsthand the challenges of keeping 20 or so kids alive during PE. For this parent, for whom the mere word gym invokes image of hellfire and dodgeball, showing up for field day is the ultimate labor of love. I did it. Yes, I did it. And I found myself assigned to this flaming ring of hell called cupid's arrows. How I longed to be at the three-legged-race station. Or even the egg toss. Anyplace but cupid's arrows.

But it wasn't so bad. Not at first. The kids knew the game and the rules. They played any way they wanted to, but they abided by the key rule that you must get a ball through the hoop to earn your place in the center. And it was fine. I retrieved balls from the periphery and cheered and got away with being at field day without any athletic ability.

But then Mr. Entitlement decided to change the rule about who got to be in the center. No longer was this a place of honor after succeeding at the game; this was an entitlement of every child in the line regardless of performance. Now we would cycle 20 kids through the center in 10 minutes just because they showed up. Welcome to hell.

There were tears. Whining. Stomped feet. Storming off. More tears. Boys and girls alike became indignant if they didn't get their turn in the middle when they bloody well thought the time was right for them to be there. Many of these kids found the surplus hoops and helped themselves. Suddenly seven hoops were up in the air where there had been the regulation three and head after nose after head felt crack after crack from these tumbling plastic halos.

The architect of our demise, this daddy who wanted everyone to be a winner even at the expense of every winner's sense of accomplishment, killed the game and the mood on the field. The frustration my daughter and I had shared during basketball season seized me in the gut. That frustration had everything to do with refs who called the game willy-nilly. The pleasure of interaction in sports is that the rules are clear and the skills required are clear, so quality of performance determines the victor. When these are skewed, anger and frustration ensue.

During a break on this morning, another mom who was helping out remarked to the father who turned everyone's morning upside down, "When I was a kid, someone won and someone lost and that was it. It was a game." Though it was a direct hit, it was lost on this fat-headed guy, who made a big psychological deal out of a silly game.

During another break, when I was the only one left standing near him, he passed a remark about a school referendum. Our region had voted against building a new elementary school last year. There just wasn't enough imaginary money to go around to pay for a new building. "If they had held another referendum, they would have gotten the vote they wanted, and we'd be building right now. But they let it go." The same frustration seized my gut again. (It's obvious what's wrong with this, right? Voting people into submission?)

Tell me how to reason with a guy who doesn't play by the rules. Any rules anywhere ever. All I could do was walk away. I'm not good at this kind of sport.