Tomorrow night is the last vestige of a time when the community defined itself. Sure it's satanic, but I like to think of it more as evil acknowledgment than devil worship. But continuing our pastoral, oppressed heritage from an age of ignorance is not good enough for some. Some kids have to get on the ice:
Some Toronto hockey parents are howling because their children are being asked to play games on Halloween, putting extra pressure on an already stressful night. But with ice time so scarce in the city, especially for elite teams, coaches are reluctant to cancel games and incur a loss, a suspension and a $500 fine. Graham Lloyd, volunteer coach of the North Toronto Selects minor bantam team, said this is the second year in a row his team is scheduled to play a game on Oct. 31.In my own town I know of an athletic group that is requiring elementary kids to be at practice from 6:30 to 9:00 pm. Madness. There is clearly only on response: mass nicky-nicky-nine-door. Hunt the people out who insist on having kids miss trick or treating, go up to their homes, knock on their doors...and run away.
Comments
ry - October 30, 2007 8:57 am
Excuse me for not being in the parent club, but why blame the schedulers? Why does Jane or Billy have to play 'elite' calibre anything(ain't you the guy who talked about playing ball in the lot being far more fun than little league?)? Sounds to me alot like the parents down here who complain about homework. They've scheduled so many other activities that there's no time for homework, all in the name of helping the kids.
I do agree that there should be time set aside for kids to enjoy being kids(which includes the N. American tradition of trick-or-treating), but why blame the schedulers for the fault of the parents who enable such nonsense? If time and money is an issue, well, it isn't like the NBA, with exhorbitant amounts of money and dedicated arenas so there isn't a good reason to have games on X-mas and New Years other than tv revenue.
On the issue of let kids be kids, si, mon capitain, I march with thee. On who gets the blame for it? Nyet.
Alan - October 30, 2007 9:55 am
Should a child be punished because he or she wants to both be in gymnastics or hockey and also trick or treat? If the parents complain and the schedulers say "suck it up or quit!" who is to blame? Shouldn't something as good and profain as Halloween be kept sacred?
Gordo - October 30, 2007 10:46 am
Take the schedulers and the ensuing type-a parents and feed them all to the real demons that come out after the kids go to bed. It's about bloody time that people realized that their sports-genius child has a better chance of winning the lottery than making the NHL. Sheesh.
Alan - October 30, 2007 2:12 pm
Halloween, I would argue, is not even a parental choice so much as a cultural imperative. They must obey the call of the pumpkin head to enter into the ritual introduction of introducing our kids into the concepts of the unknown, death and being scared shitless.
sean liddle - October 30, 2007 5:36 pm
"columbo psychedelic" w00t!
How about telling these hockey parent slave drivers that little billy can skip a fricking game once in a while to join the masses of normal kids and parents who do things other than enforce a false belief that the pursuit of elite hockeyism is even remotely important in life.
ugh..
ry - October 31, 2007 12:25 am
Here's how I see it, Al. The schedulers make do with what they've got to meet the demands placed on them by parents and children. IF there wasn't this demand for hockey in Oct they wouldn't have this problem. To be fair everyone needs to play the same number of games in a given week or month. Skipping Halloween disrupts that(and what, some parent wouldn't complain about how playing an extra game one week was unfair?).
Another angle I've seen, being a coach, is that if parents of the kids are on the scheduling committee you get some sheenanigans too. Schedule two rival teams on HAlloween sounds like a nice plan to dig at competition. We're also talking about school age children. I'm sure there's rules about how many games they can play in a week. There was in little league baseball, especially on innings pitchers can throw in.
Scared shitless? Yeah, having been robbed of candy at knife point there is that element involved. BUt I think you're, on the serious level, making fun of the parental choice element. For the kids it definitely is the CAll of Samhein but today many parents have so scheduled up kids lives that there's no ability to heed said call. And that's a shame. Play dates? WTF is that?
And let's not forget the reason they have the game scheduled for 7pm---so's Mommy and Daddy have it easy to begin with. And what kind of 13 year old calls it quits at 10pm on Halloween anyways? Midnight, without parents. That's the way to do it.
sean liddle - October 31, 2007 9:56 pm
Well as "Frederick Lature" once said...
I occasionally, very occasionally, feel like I am less of a parent because our kids aren't scheduled for events like everyone we know. Then I notice that our kids read books, play together, do crafts and generally are healthy and happy. In fact, apart from school and monthly or more frequent visits to our families they have nothing, nada, dissly, no scheduled sports, play dates, acting classes, sailing lessons or anything like that. hey, if they actually showed interedt in sign in up for something, sure, what the heck.
We are free from 5 - bedtime weeknights (except for my soccer) and most all weekends of our own accord to actually DO parenting and not shuttle the brood around to places where others fill in for us while we sip Timmy's and gripe about having to do so to other parents.
And we don't own a van either, and haven't seen any dire need for one yet.