An old bugaboo from my youth returned this week in the guise of being made a benchwarmer. For kickball.

This weekend was the big kickball playoffs/tournament and I guess I was the designated benchwarmer. Which is fine except for the fact that I was also the only male benchwarmer. We had just enough guys so that only one guy needed to sit out every inning. Normally, this would mean some sort of rotation so that everyone would play at least the entire game. That is, if the people running the team were cool. Instead they decided that it being the playoffs and all they needed to have their best people playing most of the game and the weaker players playing only a few innings at best. I was the weaker player. This despite the fact I’m not that bad of a player. In fact, I’m pretty good at kickball. I still have a bit of a pock mark on the back of my wrist left from a nasty cut I got from making a diving catch into foul territory, into another field, from a couple of weeks ago. I can catch big, red balls as well as anyone. All of which is why I think there was also an element of cool kids versus non-cool kids and did I mention this was all way too much like being a kid again?

At one point, I got a little uppity and went out onto the field when I wasn’t supposed to. When one of the captains saw me, he told me to sit down and let someone else play. When I told him I’d been sitting all day, he said something along the lines of "that’s because we want to win."

When I was younger, stuff like that happened a bit more than I’d like to admit it. In fact, due to a suck-ass High school soccer coach, I pretty much gave up on organized sports for awhile. But now that I’m much older, my first reaction was "I’m 37 years old. I’m too old for this shit."

Now when I saw that I’m too old for this shit, I don’t mean it in terms of respecting your elders, although that’s a bit of it. It’s more like when you get older, and actually it’s one of the few better parts, you have a better sense of what’s b.s. and what’s not. That attitude is total b.s. It’s lame. The fact that it came from some snot nosed kid in his early twenties makes it that much lamer ("why, when I was your age…."). And people who actually say things like that, well, the jerk store called and they want him back.

The other problem with something like this is that I’ve played enough sports and watched enough sports to realize that being stuck in that position is a no-win situation. Which is why I hate those situations. It’s sports. It’s about winning. It’s about giving one for the team. Don’t say anything and you come off as a team player. Complain and you’re not a team player. You’re a malcontent. You’re the guy who whined about not playing when the team is going to levels of playoff kickball that they have never achieved before. If it was professional sports, I’d be the guy all the sports columnists say should be traded or released or railed against on "Pardon the Interruption."

All of which is true, except for one thing- we’re talking about kickball here.

So what did I do? I went to the sidelines and brooded. Like usual. Except this time, I didn’t do the "woe is me" brood. I brooded angrily. And I didn’t really root for us to win. And then I bailed on the end-of-the-season party to read "Harry Potter." That’ll show them to mess with me.

Oh, and, of course, I did what bloggers do- I totally called them out online in front of the four people who read this, two of whom are travelling right now and not reading it. Fuckers.