From Mitvah to Melee
Today, we went from a lovely bar mitzvah-- featuring marvelous speeches from both the man of honor (Martin) and his dad (Adrian's speech was a bit of a roast about Martin's artistic nerdiness, complete with references to D&D, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Magic: The Gathering, popsicle stick sculptures, and Kubo and the Two Strings . . . which are all things my kids enjoy as well) and an awesome meal at Stage Left . . . to something else entirely: Ian, Ben and I hustled out of the restaurant to get to their club soccer match, which turned out to be the opposite of spiritual nerdery and delicious foodery; the Cosmos played a team from Paterson, which seemed to be comprised of a number of kids with either pituitary disorders or forged paperwork, and the game got ugly and then it got uglier; a kid kept punching my son in the back of the neck and the ref finally noticed and issued a yellow card and called a PK, Ian buried it and all hell broke loose, the ref issued another card, the recipient cursed out the ref, some sort of scuffle erupted and the refs finally ejected two players from the Paterson side . . . so they were down to 9 players (but winning the game 3 -1) and then the Cosmos scored again; meanwhile, the red-carded players came over to the bleachers and the Paterson parents congratulated them for their spirited and violent play, and then cursed us out (in both English and Spanish) and the game slowly wound down and the Cosmos got one last corner, and Ian launched a perfect ball and before our kid could head it, he was pushed to the ground . . . no call and the final whistle was blown and then-- of course-- there was fight during the handshake line-up and the refs confiscated the Paterson team's player cards so they could red card the entire team and the coach and consequently prevent them from playing their next match, then the Paterson players came back to the field, with their parents following close behind, a ref got pushed, and it looked like a full brawl was imminent, but the Cosmos coach got our players away from the field and then there was a lot of angry milling around and finally the refs vacated the premises with the Paterson player cards and then there was more angry milling around and then the refs came back and spoke to both teams for a while and then the refs made the players do the handshake line again-- a good intention that everyone knew would result in more chaos-- and apparently, according to several witnesses, the Paterson players spit on their hands-- of course-- so there was even more discussions and arguing and then we finally split, and it was a bipolar day to say the least (but I never felt threatened because I brought Lola to the game and she was ready to rumble).
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5 comments:
Normally I don’t read more than half of a sentence about soccer but this one was interesting enough for me to get to the end.
First, I met Lola so I know that in the event you were attacked Lola would lick your attacker to death. At least she has large jaws to theoretically scare people away.
Second, I know a little bit about Ben because you accidentally texted a bunch of us when you were trying to text Ian. I’m glad to hear he didn’t get carded at the game.
Third, I know about all but one of those nerdy things. What is Kubo and the Two Strings?
Fourth, your story sounds like a pretty typical Paterson high school sports story. My high school played various Paterson schools and I remember going to a basketball game at Eastside that wasn’t particularly friendly and the refs ultimately ran out of there as soon as the game ended.
And your previous sentence made me think a lot, so much that I couldn’t comment in a timely fashion. I understand the value of a liberal arts education and I agree that we need creative minds in the arts. That said, if you’re a kid and your parents tell you that you have to “major in something useful” because “I’m not paying for you to become a starving waiter” you don’t have much choice. I say this because it happened to me and, based on anecdotal evidence, many other children of first-generation Americans. It appears that people who fight like hell to flee oppressive regimes to come to America for a better life for themselves and their yet-to-be-born ancestors don’t always see the value in a Classics or Art History degree, rightly or wrongly. And it wouldn’t surprise me if poorer and/or rural Americans perform a similar analysis. So these parents force their kids into physics, mathematics, engineering, chemistry, economics and biology (and that’s the heirarchical order of preference among Hungarian men, as far as I can recall). While it would be nice to have more people majoring in Philosophy, it’s a luxury many American’s can’t afford—more often than not it requires you to get an advanced degree in order to be marketable, unless you attend one of a handful of elite schools in which case you can get a job on Wall Street regardless of your major because your parents or your friends’ parents golf with people who will hook you up with one. I’m not saying this is a complete picture but I do think it explains some of the shift away from traditional liberal arts majors.
yeah, all good points . . . i don't know if i'm going to push my kids away from the arts-- it would be sort of hypocritical-- seeing how i make a living, but i actually liked math and science and just figured it would be too hard. i think i could have been an economist . . . maybe if someone pushed me . . .
Kubo and the Two Strings is a really cool animated film.
I'm not sure why everyone who (negatively) mentions the "liberal arts" talks about an art history major. The liberal arts are: the humanities and the arts, and the natural and social sciences. So Zman's example of majors with value included almost all liberal arts majors: chemistry, math, physics, economics and bio. Engineering is almost always it's own school/degree that sits outside the schools of arts & sciences that house all the liberal arts majors. ~Ann
In Paterson that's just the way things go
If you're a soccer player you might as well not show up on the street
'Less you want to draw the heat…
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