Tighe's Technical

I woke up last Saturday morning and put my pants on backwards. Not intentionally, of course. I was tired, the rims of my eyes were burning, and I was struggling to comprehend Tess’s early morning litany of questions. 

And she was the one to notice. She was staring at me as I dressed. First, she commented on my “pajama bra,” and then, “Your pants are on backwards, Mom.”

I looked down and spotted the tag of my leggings at my belly button instead of at the small of my back where it should be. 

Well, it’s too late now. It’s before 8 on a Saturday morning, my pants are already on, and that right there is a success. They’re Adidas leggings, anyway—perfectly symmetrical with three white stripes down the outside of either leg. No one will ever notice. 

It was the day after Sam’s birthday and we had hosted a handful of his friends to spend the night. They were up late and woke at dawn, plus Lou let out his inner insomniac from 2am to 4am, so we didn’t get much sleep. When we heard the boys stirring just as the sun rose, Tighe darted out to pick up donuts and I braced myself for the day.

We had two basketball games and a birthday party, not bad, but pretty formidable on little sleep.

We breezed through Sam’s game and made it to Nate’s. Well, okay, Sam cried the entire ten-minute drive between basketball courts, but other than that, things were going well. I tossed him a snack and he settled down.

It was just after halftime of Nate’s game when things started to go south. 

First, I could sense Lou’s growing discomfort. I was sitting with other parents from Nate’s team, holding baby Lou in my arms. Sam and Tess were running around playing with some of the other younger siblings, sprinting back and forth between the cafeteria and the gym, too consumed with their own drama to pay attention to the game.

On my lap in the stands, Lou was getting sleepy. I had cut his nap short so we could make it to Sam’s game, and he was overdue for Nap #2 of the day. He was drooling, his t-shirt was soaked through and matted to his chest. He was curling his body into my chest, trying to nurse himself to sleep. When I denied him, he arched his back as if to lay flat in his crib. He continued to alternate between those two positions—great core workout, by the way—while emitting little tired whimpers. And so we danced.

Sam ran along the first row of bleachers, with a friend. And then, right in front of the parents I was sitting with, he lost his footing and fell forward, landing on his throat. His neck made contact with the edge of the bleacher above him, like something you’d see on You Tube video—some compilation of trampoline fails or something.

“Oooooh!” There was a chorus of winces from the spectators as he pulled himself up.

“Are you okay?” said eight different people at once.

“Yeah,” Sam mumbled. He was trying to put on a brave face, but I could tell it hurt. Clutching his neck, he clambered up the bleachers, nestled into my arm, and started to cry.

I was holding Lou, but I did my best to cuddle him into me and rub his back. I checked for blood and signs of decapitation, but there was just a red mark.

And once he overcame the pain, he wanted revenge. He blamed the friend he had been running with, who had sped away to catch up with the other kids. 

“I’m going to push him on the ground and you sit on him,” he lowered his voice so the other boy’s dad wouldn’t hear our plan. His eyes were watery and he pouted his bottom lip.

“Um, no, Sam. That’s not a nice thing to do. I know that hurt, but it wasn’t his fault.”

Dissatisfied with my response, he sniveled in anger, buried his head in my lap, and started poking my feet with his index finger. I rubbed his little blond hair and proceeded to ignore him, still focused on helping Lou find the most comfortable position. 

“Oh, no,” a mom sitting behind me said, pointing to the doors that led to the cafeteria. 

Tess was dragging herself into the gym. Her eyes were red and teary and she was rubbing her butt. 

“Owwwww! Ow, ow, owieeeeee!” she was wailing, clearly hurt. I never got the full story out of her, but hersudden neediness distracted me from Sam’s neediness. I could feel him under the bleachers still tickling my toes or something.

“Sam, what the—? Are you—? Did you—?” I moved Tess’s crumbled mass aside and leaned forward to look at my feet. He had untied my shoes and was tying the laces of the left shoe to the laces of the right shoe. Perfect. 

Meanwhile, Tess had started whining for her water, which I had left in the diaper bag at the far end of the bleachers. 

I heard the buzzer go off on the scoreboard.

“There, Tess, the game is over! Time to go home!” I was so relieved.

“Nope,” the dad sitting next to me corrected. “That was just the third quarter.”

“What?! Are you kidding me?”

My shoelaces were still fastened tightly together, and since my arms were full with a squirming Lou, there wasn’t much I could do about that. One at a time, I slid out of them and kicked them onto the floor. 

“Come on, Tess.” She was following me in front of the bleachers as we walked along the sideline, my socks scooting across the gym’s hardwood floor.

The fourth quarter had just started and I could hear Tighe arguing with the ref.

“Uh-oh,” I whispered to Lou.

“He tackled him,” the ref was saying. Nate’s teammate had gotten the ball stolen from him behind the half-court line.

“Before or after the kid crossed the white line??” Tighe fired back. “Which happened first? Because if the kid got tackled beforehe crossed the white line, then that’s the most amazing tackle I’ve ever seen!”

“Hmm, he needs more sleep,” I thought to myself, digging around in the diaper bag for Tess’s water bottle. She took two sips, was immediately cured, and scurried off to find her friends.

“Coach, I could call a technical. Is that what you want?” the ref shouted back, visibly angry.

“I’d like you to make the right call, but you do what you got to do,” Tighe quipped. Like a smart ass.

“That’s it, sir!” The ref tweeted his whistle, awarded Tighe a technical foul, and let the opposing team shoot their two shots, neither of which went in.

I stood in the corner and rocked Lou to sleep on my shoulder. The game ended—Nate’s team lost by two.

After, I was tucking Lou into his car seat and repacking the diaper bag as Tighe crossed the court to help me.

“Aren’t you going to ask why I’m not wearing any shoes?”

Tighe glanced down at my feet.

“Hmm, no.” He scooped up Lou’s car seat and started across the court towards the exit, carrying a giant mesh bag of basketballs over his shoulder.

I finished tying my shoes, grabbed the diaper bag, and scurried out after them.

A few hours later, I was returning home from a three year-old’s birthday party with Tess. Tighe followed me as I hung up my coat. He’d had time to process his technical foul from earlier and he was rehashing the entire end of the game. The foul that started off the whole argument, what he said to the ref, what the ref said to him, what the other coach said—all of it. He was using hand gestures, tossing his head back for emphasis, and lowering his voice each time he peppered in an expletive. 

It was clear he’d been thinking about this all afternoon. But all I heard was “blah, blah, blah.” 

It was the same contrast between my enthusiasm for this blog, my fingertips excitedly bouncing off the tops of my laptop keys, while your eyes are glazing over, debating how far down you should scroll to see if this ever gets funny.

I nodded, dutifully, doing my best to make occasional eye contact while scanning the mess in our house. “Yeah,” I interjected when he finally paused, “but aren’t you going to ask why I wasn’t wearing any shoes?” 

“No,” he shook his head slowly, thoughtfully, “but I am curious about why your pants are on backwards.”