How not to be a soccer mom.

Since Wednesday, the hotel I am staying in has been host to a flash infestation of 12 to 14 year old soccer players. My caveat is that I am not opposed to 12 to 14 year olds, soccer, team sports, and the like. I am opposed to children spoiled green and rotten to the point of utter disrespect.

I'm not sure if any of them have actually played soccer since they've been here. I saw a few doing laps in the hallways; tall, lanky boys whose hollow thuds could be heard circuiting the four floors of the hotel nearly ran me over more than once. If I weren't so lazy and bitter I would have run after them.

When the futbol stars weren't jumping on their beds or yelling at each other across hallways through closed doors, they were socializing in the dining area where the Chinese wedding took place a few weekends ago; not nearly as serene and romantic.
Maybe I was resentful of their having pals abound to chat and laugh with . . . or maybe they were just exceptionally loud and obnoxious. In any case, I left my room a few times to escape the roar of teenage capriciousness whirling all around me.

By last night most of them had gone. I was waiting for the Sunday papers to arrive in the lobby this morning when a set of them checked out. As it has been all weekend, there were no parents or coaches or chaperones. Perhaps they were outside waiting in plain white vans, warming the engines, preparing for departure.

The kids enjoyed their last night here though. There is a basketball court directly outside my windows, on the ground floor of course. (How shocking it would be to look outside my second story window and see a floating basketball court! Gasp!) To continue . . . between 12 midnight and 1:30 am, my sporty friends enjoyed the basketball court, which goes dark at 10:00 pm on the dot every night. Yeah, it wasn’t a week night, and yeah, I would end up being awake a while longer, but it was getting to me. It was worse than the boys running in the hallways. A rubbery resonating bounce jolted me every few seconds. Shrill laughter and an unearned sense of entitlement drifted up and through the two planes of glass, heavy blackout fabric, sheer paneling, carpet-thick drapes, and into my ears. At one point I pulled all of the window dressings back and rapped on the window, hard. Their heads shot up at me, and I mouthed “It’s really late!” then swished the curtains back into place. I could have sworn one younger boy was only wearing a t-shirt and tighty-whities. Disturbing. But, I think this did nothing but encourage them, and I should have known that.

After being a good sport for well over an hour and a half, I cracked. I went downstairs under the ruse of needing extra toilet paper to complain. I saw that the most elderly and delicate man employed by the hotel was on the night shift. Every time I come to him he pulls up his eyebrows as if it will make him hear better, and cups a hand to his right ear. I didn’t want to sacrifice him to those kids. No telling what they would do to him, how belligerently they would disobey his orders. I couldn’t bear the thought of it. I went back to my room with two rolls of toilet paper, but no more backbone than I had left with.

Suddenly, it grew out of nowhere (my backbone that is.) I dialed zero and the man at the front desk picked up promptly as if he knew what I was calling about. I spoke loudly from the very start, knowing that his eyebrows were likely creeping up his forehead with great might. I told him that I hated to be a bother, but did the kids playing basketball have any parents here at the hotel? With the command of a General he said “I’ll take care of it!” He sounded annoyed; not with me, but with the events that dared to take place on his shift. I thought maybe he had been getting lots of calls and I was the magic number that meant he had to go do something about it, so I asked him, “Have you gotten lots of complaints about them?” “No, I’ll go take care of it!” he said. I told him thanks and braced myself.

I heard the door to the courtyard swing open within seconds. “You can’t be playing basketball out here this time of night!” is what he growled at the kids. There were a few more stubborn bounces of the ball and I soon heard their now little voices inside the hotel. They returned to their rooms I suppose because I suddenly had the silence I had struggled to demand for the previous two hours.

I got warm fuzzies for a few reasons:

• I didn't let the possibility of looking like a ninny stop me from asking for a little respect.
• I learned that having a backbone and waving it around is a good thing; the night watchman didn't take any crap. He told those kids the how and why and didn't leave even a sliver of room for discussion.
• Even if they didn't realize it, the little doodies were shown that they aren't the center of the world and their actions affect other people.

And the overall lesson of this possibly over-reactive gripe, bore out of four days with nothing to do: The only thing possibly worse than soccer moms, is soccer kids.