Suburban hell

BB's spring soccer season started yesterday. It was delayed twice by our heavy rains. The organization he plays with has been assigned a new set of fields by the city. And when I say new, I mean they are brand new fields. It was not so good. One has to take a gravel/dirt road to get to them and park in a gravel/mud lot. Gravel and mud is not easy for LB's stroller. The fields themselves are barely that. Uneven planes of mud with tufts of grass might qualify as open space, but they aren't really proper playing fields. Balls barely roll as the confront uneven clumps of grass and the kids were tripping as they ran. And then, when we were done, 200 or 300 cars, all with screaming, hungry kids inside, attempted to leave the mud and gravel at the same time. The whole mise-en-scène just felt like raw suburban hell. There is a new subdivision bordering the fields, with eroding new bluffs surrounding it, and an eery containment pond nearby (was this swampy land?) beckoning to small children to drown themselves. The final insult. No bathrooms.



Two observations: 1) BB is taller than everyone else. 2) Looking down the line of kids as they listened to their coach, everyone stood still with one foot on their soccer ball, except BB who was spinning around with his arms in the air imagining some future soccer glory.