A Mother’s Guide to Surviving the Fall Sports Season

It’s cold, it’s long and it’s boring. Watching kids runs around a field in the rain, gray, cold has to be one of the most painful experiences of parenthood both physically and mentally.

Physically sitting on those hard benches, both cold, hard metal and wood, feeling your core body temperature dip from being outside, and feet hurt from standing up with the other parents from pretending to be interested in a “rally.” Mental anguish comes from that well, they’re kids, so they’re not very good. So there are interceptions, missed goals, passes and catches, painful to watch.

Then of course there are also those games ended by a mercy rule. It’s always your kid’s team that ends up being put out of their misery too. So how do you get through this without having to send the kids to therapy later?

Ten parenting tips to surviving fall sports

1.) Alcohol. It keeps your warm and your spirits up. Put a nip in your “coffee” or spike that chai tea latte. Be sure to carry it in a disposable container though. A flask isn’t a discreet as you think and leaves hard evidence. A tiny plastic liquor bottle can be discarded and is more easily stashed.

2.) Vicodin. Or equivalent thereof. Don’t overdue it so it’s obvious, but just enough so that you feel pretty good and the pain of that metal bench just melts away.

3.) Thermacare wraps. Disposable, discreet and they give off a warm, gentle warming glow. Just peel, activate and paste all over your body in the car before heading to the field.

4.) Schedule other stuff. Anything and everything.

5.) Who says high school reunions can only be every ten years?

6.) Simply make up an excuse. Sometimes even mommy needs to go to uh, yoga. Or um….the library. Or is menstrual.Then never leave the house. (Just be sure to change out of your pj’s so it at least looks like you went somewhere.)

7.) Get there a little early and get the prime parking spot where you can see the action from the car. Never leave the car.

8.) Make up names for the other parents. Not names like Sue or Mike, but “semi functional literate that shouldn’t have been allowed to breed” “red baseball cap guy” “fat ass” and “the shame of society.”

9.) Write a little story about you new characters or words. Once upon a time, there was a fat ass that married a guy who always wore a red baseball cap. While the pair were more sophisticated than society’s shame, the semi functional literate that shouldn’t have been allowed to breed, they were far and away the ugliest people seen in nary a decade. Their children, doomed to the middle aged uglies, were the pity of the town.

10.) Count everything. How many times that loser Williams kids missing the ball. How many times Mike’s mom yells “it’s Ok honey!” How many times the coach clicks his pen. How many times the guy in the row two down and 5 seats over tries to covertly pick his nose.

If that doesn’t keep you busy and warm this sports season, you’re simply not drinking enough.