A parent with a good memory

[Mark Padgett]

Yesterday, I went into a local place to get a burger and while I was waiting, this woman comes up to me and says, "You're that ref, aren't you?" As you might imagine, this happens about a million times here in my town, so I said, "Yeah." She then proceeded to ask me about something that happened in her daughter's 6th grade rec game three years ago! Apparently, I tossed her kid's coach. She wanted to know if I remembered why I did that. I told her I've tossed so many coaches, I can't really remember them all. She said, "Well, he threw his clipboard at the scorer. Do you remember now?" Actually, I did remember that, and I told her so. She said that after the game, the coach told the parents he thought he should have just gotten a warning and that I "overracted". She wanted me to know she and a few of the other parents told the coach he was out of line and deserved the ejection.

I told her the scorer was a HS kid who actually got hurt from the incident, and that the coach was lucky the kid didn't sue him. In fact, I had that coach suspended "for life" from our local kids rec league. The mom said she was glad the league did that because "that coach was a real a--hole".

I then quickly proceeded to finish my burger and leave.