[psujaye]

During warm-ups of my BV game last night, the R & I noticed a player wearing a protective brace on one of his hands. we called him over, looked at it, deemed it to be too hard (it had 2 separate metal rods for support in it) and restrictive and asked that he take it off and have his hand taped (if he wanted). he had no issue with it and neither did the coach.
Apparently his father was in the stands and he politely comes down and asks me about the brace. Here is a brief synopsis of the discussion (it appears long but it was literally 30-45 seconds):

Father: what's wrong with my son's brace?
Me: its too restrictive
Father: did they change the rule? I had (insert high level observer as a name drop) and (insert assignor's name as a name drop) look at it and they said it was fine.
Me: We'll my partner and I feel its too hard and restrictive.
Father: do you want me to go get the rule book?
Me: no, but i appreciate the offer. We need to worry about the other 9 players on the court also, not just your son.
Father: well i'm worried about his hand. he's played 18 games with it on, are you saying the other 36 officials were wrong?
Me: I don't know what the other 36 officials did. I know he can't play this game tonight with the brace on.
Father: what's your name?
Me: (silence)
father: you can't tell me your name?
Me: if you have an issue, you should call (insert previously name dropped assignor's name here) and tell him the officials on this game wouldn't let your son play with the hand brace on.
Father: (walks away)

Has this type of thing happened to anyone else during warm-ups? I initially wanted to ignore him completely, but he was polite (for the most part). You never know who is watching (from an observer/assignor standpoint) and i don't want to come off wrong by having a conversation with a parent. I honestly have no idea if i did the right or wrong thing by entertaining this guy. Part of me feels like i shoudve ignored him completely.
I'm open for suggestions.