This time last ‘year, I was driving the neighbor's boys to the bus stop, so they could catch the bus to football practice.
There were many reasons why I didn’t like doing it. For starters, I hate driving during what should never be called rush hour. I
The boys were in their early teens, I think the younger one was twelve. He was the one who told me he’d been playing football since he was four.
I am almost 100 percent sure that children that young shouldn’t be playing football.
The sport is dangerous. Kids get hurt. Sometimes kids get killed. No one seems to mind.
The boys’ mother is, probably, encouraging them to play, because playing football could get them college scholarships. They might even get a chance to play the pros.
Like my neighbor, John, who played for a year with the Dallas Cowboys. He lives in a Pittsburgh suburb, now, and does yard work as a second job.
They may get to play for Penn State, or Pitt, or Ohio State.
Or, they may get to play for Robert Morris University, Geneva University, or Gallipolis State University.
Lots of small schools give athletic scholarships, because they have alumnae, who like it when their team wins games, and are more likely to cough up toward the new administration building when their team wins the big game.
But you have to wonder what a young man who played football for Geneva University is going to do when he graduates—if he graduates.
But people like my neighbor want their kids to play sports, because it could lead to wealth and success.
It’s called SELL, sports, entertainment, lawsuits and lotteries, the way blue collar Americans become wealthy these days.
So, parents push their sons to play football at ridiculously early ages, or basketball, or baseball, or maybe gymnastics for girls.
Though girls have other options.
They do pageants.
You’ve seen them on “Toddlers in Tiaras”, or maybe on some tabloid TV news show. Girls not old enough to learn multiplication, with bleached blond hair, and whitened teeth, behaving in ways kids that age should never behave. Being given caffeinated drinks and sugar to keep them alert.
Parents pay ridiculous sums to enter their kids in these pageants, not to mention travel and hotel expenses.
We see them on the TV. That poor kid is five years old and wearing makeup. She’s moving like a burlesque dancer. Ain’t it awful! Ain’t it awful! I would never do anything like that to my child!
Because you have a good job. Your child is going to a good school. You expect your child to go to college, and you will be able to find a way to pay for it.
You work in a small town nursing home. Your husband works construction, when he can. You struggle to get by. Your kid is going to a fourth rate school, and you can’t afford to move to a better district. But you want your daughter to have a really good life.
So, you beg, borrow, or steal enough to enter her in the Little Miss Princess Pageant, hoping she will be noticed and, get a part in a commercial. That could lead to a role on a sitcom, maybe or a part in a movie.
Except that won’t happen, no matter what the pageant promoters say.
When I first moved to a blue collar suburb, there was a dancing school on the street near the bus stop. They offered Jazz, tap, ballet etc.
I saw some of the dancers perform, innocent, mostly silly, routines. (My favorite; a boy, age 9, doing a basic tap to “Run Around Sue”, while his partner, a nine year old girl in a poodle skirt and pony tail, ran around the stage.)
Having danced, myself, as a kid, and loved it, I didn’t think much about it.
Then, suddenly, there were two more dancing schools in my neighborhood, and I came to understand.
If these girls could become backup dancers, maybe they’d have a career in entertainment, and maybe it would pay better than being a home health aide.
The children are exploited. Their parents are exploited. Because it amuses us to exploit them.
So, I hope for a saner, more prosperous age, where moms don’t let their kindergartners play football, or compete in beauty pageants. They let them be children, knowing there is plenty of time for them to grow up, and when they do, they will have abundant opportunities.