Pull your britches up, boy!

See this?

This is Matthew… or “Bite Me” as he’s affectionately known by his coaches and teammates.

Want to know how he got that nickname?  Have I already told you?  I can’t remember.  Of course, that’s nothing new… I can’t remember my own name here of late.

Matthew has no practice jerseys.  I’m cheap and told him that I wouldn’t buy him a fancy practice jersey.  The coach told us that “dad’s old shirts” would fit over pads which really meant that big shirts will do.

So he found some old shirts from Krystal before they shut down that have a HUGE burger on the front and in big letters it says “Bite Me”.

Please, hold off on nominating me for Mother of the Year until you finish this post.

Matthew likes the nickname that he has because it’s so much better than his nickname of the past two years… that would’ve been “Cupcake”  He wanted to get Cupcake on the back of his jersey… and then after he takled someone he could say, “Cupcake?  No I think you read that wrong… I’m a pound cake”

It worked well when he was a tackle person (that has an official name but I don’t remember what it is… I do know when he tackled, he played defense though and he doesn’t now.)

Matthew is a guard on Gold offense.

Gold offense is the second string offensive team and he’s second string because he’s 11 and it’s his first year in this league.

Coincidentally, it’s also his last, unless of course I can get him to lose 13 pounds and keep it off between now and next August… when he’s 12.

At the age of 12, you have to weigh in and if you’re over a certain weight, you can’t play rec ball which means that he will have to play middle school ball.

Not a bad thing, but you have to be the “baby” and “second string” two years in a row.

Matthew’s a big boy.  Part of being a big boy is not always having pants that fit in the right way and this year, we got the biggest size that they had.  Without all the pads, they fit so nice.

Add the hip, butt, thigh and knee pads and they’re a bit tight… and they don’t stay up.

As a mother, I sit in the stands and watch my child block the kid across from him, and when the coast is clear he takes a step back and hikes up his britches.

It bothers me.  I understand that he must pull up his pants because, heaven forbid, somone might be able to spot the fruit of the loom writing on the gray band of his drawers, but I think that he could at least wait until the ball was dead and the play was over.

Like, hear the whistle, pull up pants, get on the line again.  It makes perfect sense to me.

This bothers no one else and the only reason that I like that he does this is that it’s easy for me to spot him on the field.

He is oblivious that he does this.

But now I have proof.

One of the mothers has been taking pictures of the team at every game.  We get home and an hour or so later, we have 200 pictures to look at and as I was perusing over 800 pictures tonight, this is what I found…

I’ll spare you the rest… but there are a ton of them.  And for once, he can see that this is what he does.

He blocks.  He steps back.  He pulls up his pants.  He joins the rest of his team.

His coach has no problem with this.  I do.

And I did a bad thing.

I approached the coach about it.  (See why I told you to hold off on submitting that nomination?)

I said, in my most redneck manner, and I SWEAR I don’t know where it came from.. it was if I was trying to SOUND like a dad… “Why don’t you get on that boy of mine and chew him a new one?”

“I get on him enough.  He’s holding his own for an 11 year old.”

And then I felt dumb.

I retreated to where the mom’s stand and now, I just keep my mouth shut.

But secretly?  I’m trying to figure out how I could duck tape his pants to his body so that he’ll quit pulling them up all.game.long.

Until next time…