Saturday morning I took the kid to play in her first soccer game. It was much worse than I ever imagined.

First of all she’s only five. Neither she nor I had any great expectations. I never cared for the sport, personally. The kid has no clue about the game at all, but insisted she join a team anyway. She’s a social creature.

So we get there and it’s worse than I expect by a long shot. Every caricature of a sports parent that you could ever imagine was incarnated on this field. So I tell the kid to go have fun and I sit down away from the other parents. As the kids are warming up I notice that most parents aren’t speaking English. Portuguese and Spanish are dominant. Some of the fathers are kicking a ball around off to the side, completely overdoing it, hamming it up and causing a general scene by yelping loudly in their native tongues. They are all grossly overweight and out of shape. Within minutes it comes to a grinding halt, with one guy holding his hand over his heart and panting like a dog. Adios Mio! This guy’s going to die here in the grass, I thought. I don’t have time for this today.

Instead he slowly got up and walked back to the rest of his family and collapsed on a bench. His family consisted of at least nine adults and a passel of poorly-mannered kids of all ages. Their normal speaking voices were deafening. They all yelled at each other for the entire game.

Meanwhile I turned my attention back to my kid. The game was about to start and I was fairly certain she didn’t even know the basic rules of the game. The whistle blows and the game begins. Every player from both teams swarm the ball and it resembles a rugby scrum. No one plays defense. Even the goalies are in the scrum. Eventually the ball squirts out of the clump with a child or two chasing it while the rest of them just stand there watching. Less than a minute in, most of the kids have already had enough. Two of them were crying.

To make a long story short, it works like this. The kids chase the ball in a big clump. If one of them actually manages to kick it, it goes out of bounds. This continues until it’s time to go home, or enough children are crying that they have to call a time out. Within the first ten minutes most of the parents were chasing their kids around the field yelling instructions at them. The coach sees the hopelessness of all this and bans the parents from the field.

Meanwhile, I realize that the fat bastard who thought he was having a heart attack stole my two bottles of water. Now my kid’s got nothing to drink and it’s hot out. I went over to the guy and pointed out his error, but one bottle was already gone and he was drinking out of the other one. As I’m talking to him I hear a great commotion coming from his family. They’re all screaming, “Carlos! Carlos! Carlos!”

The guy I’m talking to dashes off to the sideline along with his giant extended family. On the field there’s a kid that looks a lot older than the others. These kids are supposed to be between three and five years old and this kid looks like he’s ten. He’s dribbling the ball downfield all by himself, the rest of both teams either crying or sitting down on the field. The big kid is approaching the net and there is no goalie in sight. With a flourish the kid kicks the ball into the open goal and throws his hands into the air. Instantly, the giant family of Portuguese people run onto the field and lift the kid up onto their shoulders cheering, “Carlos! Carlos! Carlos!”

It was surreal. The coach, who had had quite enough, was trying to restore order, but it was hopeless. I looked around trying to find my kid and saw her and another little girl sitting in the grass chatting. They were nonplussed.

When the whole ordeal was over and we were walking to our car through the sea of minivans, I asked if she had fun.

“It’s too hot out.”

“I know, Sweetie, but did you like it?”

“I would like it better if it was inside.”

“You don’t want to come anymore?”

“Not really.”

“Well, I don’t blame you. “

As I buckled her into the car I could still hear little Carlos’s family going at it. I looked up just in time to see the fat father kick a soccer ball into the side of someone’s van.