Little Smoot's softball season is in full swing, and her team played a rather obnoxious opponent a couple weeks ago. The team members themselves weren't terribly obnoxious, but the parents certainly were.
We played at their park, and many of the parents parked their cars on a hillside overlooking the field. And other parents had various forms of mobile horns with them. Any time any of their girls did anything, and I mean anything, positive -- like not falling over -- the parents would start honking like a flock of defective geese. Unfortunately, the best we could do in retribution was to yell "HONK!" when our girls did something right.
So last night this team played on our turf, and we were prepared. One of our parents went out and bought a whole bunch of those annoying, plastic hand clapping things that light up, so each of us had one of those. I'm not sure it mattered, but they were pink.
I figured I would take things to a new, higher level of obnoxiousness, so I brought Little Smoot's trumpet along. It turned out to be an awesome tool against the folks from Monaca.
I suggested to our gang that we let the other parents make the first move. For one thing, we didn't want to look like we were the ones starting this little war. And for another thing, we were a little concerned about whether their town may have had two teams of girls, and we would end up just looking like rude morons honking at the wrong team.
Thankfully, it was the right team, and a couple of their horn honkers were there for the festivities. During the first half inning we let them do their honking, which, while annoying, was absolutely nothing in comparison to the noise I was able to generate with the trumpet. I also made note of the fact that the main honker for the other team was an 80+ year-old guy, and if I annoyed him with the trumpet, I didn't have to worry too much about him beating the crap out of me after the game.
I haven't really touched the trumpet since high school, except for a one-time gig at church. (Oddly enough, they never asked me to play again.) So I wasn't necessarily playing things well. But I was playing things loudly. Quite loudly. I suspect that I interrupted the play of games at adjoining fields. If only I could have captured the expression on that guy's face the first time I whipped out the trumpet. It was a Kodak moment, to say the least.
Our league has a rule that says that if a game is more than an hour and 40 minutes long, a new inning cannot begin and the game is over. A coach from the other team, knowing that we were closing in on that mark and that our team was gaining some momentum, went up to her pitcher and began a lengthy conversation to kill some time so we wouldn't have an opportunity to catch up. After watching this charade for a bit, I played the theme from Jeopardy!, which got a rousing reaction from our girls and parents.
Her ploy did work, however, and the game ended a few moments later. There were two winners in that game: the other team won the game, and I easily won the contest as Most Obnoxious Parent. Woo hoo! The other team's primary honker actually came over and delivered a concession speech. Thankfully he thought it was hilarious that I brought the trumpet, and we all had a good laugh.
Tonight I'm going to try to figure out how to get an operational fog horn into the game.
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