it's a small world, after all

It's all over the local news today that a high school softball coach was fired after holding a celebratory barbecue for his team and their families where beers were served - to parents and drunk by - only parents. Some idiot parent attending the event complained to the school board and the idiot school board reacted by not only firing the coach but banning him from coaching for three years!

What the...? What exactly is wrong with people today? Apart from the fact that ABSOLUTELY NO alcohol was consumed by any of the kids at the party, why did someone freak out? And why did this cowardly person not just ask the coach to not serve the beers, but instead go behind his back and complain? If they were uncomfortable why didn't they just remove themselves and their kid from the situation? Why did they self-appoint themselves to be the arbiter of decency for all the other families? And what the heck is so bad about grown-ups consuming beer in front of their kids?

This was a party, a barbecue, for adults and children. Does this particular parent lack such control over their progeny that they were afraid of them being anywhere near even the whiff of alcohol? In the adult world I live in, folks over 21 can actually legally purchase and consume liquor. They can also responsibly prevent their children, when they are with them, from doing the same.

It wasn't an unsupervised teenage party with a bunch of kids and lots of booze at the guy's house. But this person is also kidding themselves if they think their child will never be in that sort of situation. And before they turned fink, did they think of the ramifications their self-righteous attitude might have on their child? It won't take much for the whole school to figure out which parent ratted, and the person most likely to suffer the consequences, besides the coach, will be the child of this parent.

It drives me nuts that the school board also responded so strongly to this crap complaint instead of just defusing the situation. What is everyone so afraid of? Last I heard this was a free country. And I do not look forward to having to deal with this sort of person and their attitudes about what is "right" for "the children" in my future, with my child. Your beliefs may not be my beliefs. I love my daughter and cater to her whims probably more than I should at times, but in no way do I believe that we should live in a kid's world, where kids rule and everything is overbalanced, overprotected. She has to grow up and live in the real world, an adult world, and she needs to learn that there are certain things that grown-ups are allowed to do (drink, drive, vote - not all at the same time!) that when she is old enough, she will be able to do, too.

I hope the coach's appeal to the superintendent of schools is heard in a responsible, open-minded way, and it is realized that the concern should not be on the coach's beverage offerings at the barbecue, but the creation of bad feeling, suspicion, and finger-pointing that resulted from one bad apple.

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