I just got an e-mail asking me to sign up for snack duty for my son’s soccer team.

This would be fine and dandy, and perhaps expected, except that I’m talking about my teenager not my pre-schooler.

Really, people.

He’s less then a year away from operating a motor vehicle and I still have to reward him with a Capri Sun and a mini bag of chips after a sweaty soccer session?

I know it’s not nice to talk behind someone’s back and I know for sure that the lady who asked meant well, but I may have to take a stand here.

I mean, at this age if Beau forgets his water bottle he can fashion a cup out of a magnolia leaf and drink to his heart’s content for all I care.

It reminds me of a time last semester when he called me and said, “Could you bring me a sandwich I forgot my lunch.”

Yes, son, let me hop to and run on home from work so I can fulfill your dietary needs pronto. 

NO, seriously, I said something more like, “Are you joking?  Borrow money from your friends, scavenge some of their peanut butter crackers, go on a hunger strike but don’t don’t don’t call me because YOU forgot.”

I don’t ask much from my son, but getting himself, the things he needs, the equipment and homework and apparatus of being 15 from school to his father’s house to my house to the soccer game to the car and back is not, I think, asking too much. 

And as for rewarding our little athletes after an intense soccer match, well, he keeps asking me to stop treating him like a little kid and I agreed to try so he can think of the loss of snacks as the first steps towards adulthood.

P.S. I talk big here, but if the lady asks me to my face I’ll probably offer three weeks of snacks and transportation for six to and from every game.