ANOTHER LAUNDRY STORY
(Dedicated to Janice, who had to buy laundry detergent today)
You have reminded me of the time I was humiliated in front of many other mothers at a football game, which is the worst kind of humiliation for a woman, second maybe to wearing the wrong outfit to a fund-raising event.
Ammo was playing on the Carroll Middle School JV football team and of course, the Best Mother in the Universe went to every game. I was sitting in the bleachers waiting for him to get his two minutes playing time and chatting with all the other model moms who were
bored to death but would never have admitted it, because in Texas that would be grounds for immediate expulsion from the state. Ammo was standing in that long row of hundreds of 7th graders along the sidelines (every boy plays football in Texas at least one year just to be able to say later in life that oh yeah, sure, he played football back in school).
There is nothing more endearing than an as yet undeveloped 12 year old in those huge shoulder pads with their little skinny legs sticking out below, holding their helmets under their arms and believing that they look exactly like Troy Aikman from behind. I was admiring my sweet son's adorable little physique when I noticed that his pants were a
different color than the rest of the team's. I whispered to my friend, Jan, "Hey! Ammo has grey pants on and Blake's are white."
She studied them for a minute. "Well, they are, but look, so are BJ's."
This was true-but that worried me even more. Neither BJ nor Ammo were exactly the star players on the team- they may even have been the smallest. Maybe this was some sort of discrimination! Maybe they only had grey for the boys who wore Extra-Small, Like if you weighed under 90 pounds, you were labelled and ostracized by the hue of your pants. I began to get angry. It's hard enough to be little without having to wear a different color uniform. What were they thinking? What about my child's self-esteem? I turned to BJ's mom and pointed this out. I could see it bothered her, too. Our voices rose with our indignation.
Finally, I declared that I was going to ask Ammo to bring them home so I could examine them, make sure they were of the quality, the same brand as the big guys. There was a silence.
"Doesn't he bring them home every week after the game?" Jan said delicately.
"No, why should he?" I said.
Jan hated to do this to me in public; she's a good friend. "Ummm-- to be washed."
Pause. BJ's mom and I looked at each other. Apparently BJ had never brought his home either. I have to wonder now...did we really think that the coaches collected the ripe uniforms of 120 seventh graders, many of whom had not yet realized the extent to which they now needed deodorant, and taken them to their own washing machines every week? The other mothers all tried not to make the moment worse by pretending that the game had suddenly gotten very exciting, but I knew what they were thinking. I knew that I had fallen far down on their list of Mothers Worth Emulating. It was a sad moment.
I sent Ammo back to the locker room after the game to get his uniform. He said I might want to wait until he could bring a plastic Ziplock bag to school for it. I said "Nonsense! I can suffer no more than I already have! Get it now!"
I should have listened to him. But at least the next week, after several cycles in the Whirlpool and a box of Tide, he looked just like the other guys.
(Well-except for BJ, whose mom had apparently decided she'd rather let him be be different than put that uniform in her washer. I understand she also shamelessly told her visiting in-laws that the different color pants meant BJ was the captain of the team.) |
