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Ten minutes into the first half, Peter still hadn’t been put in the game. This was weird; even though he was only a wee fifth grader, he was one of the best players, and he’d started in their last game. She had a bad feeling in her stomach. This had to be about the incident at school. She forced herself to wait until halftime to do anything, and then she waited for the team meeting to be over before approaching the coach.
She didn’t want to approach the coach. She knew Peter would hate her for it. But he shouldn’t be benched for defending little kids.
She asked a nearby mom to watch her two youngest, and the woman looked up from her phone just long enough to grudgingly agree. Joanna whined. She wanted to go with her, but Sandra didn’t know how this was going to go, and didn’t need a little distraction, nor a little audience, hanging off her hand.
Her stomach full of butterflies, she walked the seventeen-mile-long goal line and then rounded the corner to head for the bench. The coach saw her coming and pretended he didn’t.
“Hi, Mr. Bell,” she called out, “do you have a second?”
“A quick one. The game’s about to start.”
This was not true. There were five minutes on the clock. Did he think she couldn’t read a clock?
“I just wanted to check in with you. There was an incident at school today, and I didn’t know if you’d heard—”
“Of course I’ve heard. Mrs. Van DeVenter lets me know whenever my athletes get into trouble at school.”
“Great,” she lied. “Well, I just wanted to make sure you heard Peter’s side of it—”
He held up a patronizing hand. “There is no Peter’s side. He pushed a kid, and he will spend this game on the bench as a consequence. He’s lucky I let him suit up.” He would have had to work incredibly hard to sound more self-righteous.
She raised an eyebrow. “Lucky? Do you know that he was sticking up for some second graders who were getting picked on? Do you know that he didn’t mean to knock Cameron down, that he was just trying to protect the younger boys?” She knew her voice was getting louder and higher pitched, but she couldn’t seem to stop it. It was like a runaway train.
He held up the hand again, but she ignored it.
“Of course we should talk to him about better ways to prevent bullying, but I don’t think benching him for an entire game is an appropriate—”
“I decide what is and isn’t appropriate around here, ma’am. And I can’t encourage my athletes to engage in vigilante justice on the playground.”
“Vigilante?” she shrieked. This kept getting more and more absurd. A gentle voice in her head reminded her that she was representing Jesus to everyone watching this scene. What would Jesus do? When he got angry at injustice, he flipped over tables. Maybe she could flip over the bench. How heavy was that thing? The scorer’s table looked more manageable.
“Everything okay here?” a man’s voice interrupted.
Sandra turned to see one of the officials giving her an official-looking stare down.
She was going to lose this battle. She knew it then. The men were ganging up on her, and maybe they should. She was, after all, the crazy mom hollering at the coach. She was being the mom she’d sworn she’d never be. But darn it, she needed to be a little crazy right now. This situation was crazy.
The official stuck out his hand. “Michael White.”
Her breath caught, and all fury fled her brain. “I’m sorry, what?”
His hand was still stuck out in the air, so she took it and allowed him to pump hers up and down. His hand was very wet, as were his shirt and forehead. “I said, my name is Michael White. And you are?”
“Sandra.”
“Well, Sandra, the game is about to start, and no non-team personnel are allowed in this area. If you could find your way back to the spectator section, that’d be great.”
She nodded, totally forgetting about Peter’s situation. She backed away, still staring at the referee, who now had his back to her and was blowing his whistle. Finally, she turned and headed away, picking up her pace. She hadn’t accomplished her mission. Peter was still benched. But she wasn’t thinking about that. She wasn’t even thinking about the fact that her son was being bullied at church. She could now think of only one thing: the soccer official’s name. Michael White.