Only Me…

By now, most of you have probably picked up on the fact that I’m not super fond of children. I don’t know why I seem to be lacking that maternal instinct, but for whatever reason it’s not really there. Whoever I marry is going to have their hands full until our kids (if we have kids) are in middle school. Then, and probably ONLY then, will I take over. My Swiss teammates have learned this about me, my coach knows it; it’s kind of an ongoing joke actually. A little kid walks by and my teammates look in my direction waiting to see what will happen. I actually can’t remember how they figured out I’m not a fan of children, but maybe it was when I helped out one of the practices for the young kids and this little boy refused to do every drill, pretty much bullied all the kids smaller than him, and then told me, “After this [practice] you WILL give me your phone number.” Sorry buddy, you’re seven.

Like I said, I’m not sure what led my teammates to know I didn’t love children at first, but if they had any doubts about my feelings, this past weekend solidified my stance.

On the way to our game against Bale we stopped at a rest stop to have our pre-game meal (Side note: the rest stop restaurants aren’t McDonalds and Burger King with Sbarro on the side; they actually have a restaurant to eat at, and usually it’s buffet-style. For example, some of us had pasta; others had rice and chicken, etc.). Anyways, I was standing in line for pasta with one of my teammates, and I noticed this little blonde kid around four years old, standing behind me with his mom. I’ll admit, I was trying to pay attention to the German words (we were in the German-speaking part of Switzerland) my teammate was teaching me, but I definitely had my eye on the little boy. After a little while, I turned my back to him and fully engaged with my teammate in our conversation, thinking I was in the clear. WRONG. Within a few seconds I felt a little tap on my buttocks region. I quickly turned and saw the little boy run and hide behind his mom, who was, no doubt, absolutely clueless to what her kid just did. I gave him that good ol’ Hillary glare that makes people who don’t know me (and maybe the ones who do?) shake in their boots. I thought my glare signified our understanding, that the touching of the booty was not appropriate behavior.

I returned to my teammate, wishing that the pasta guy would hurry it up so I could get the heck out of there. Ugh, to no avail. Shortly after I turned around I felt a cuppage of my booty. No longer just a tap, cuppage. That’s right. Two hands cupped around my buttocks. I again turned around and looked at him and his mother, to let her know what was up. I thought the language barrier wasn’t an issue, since she immediately turned to him and said, “No,” which is pretty much understood in every country in Europe. I nodded and again thought I would be able to wait out the rest of the pasta making in peace.

After a few minutes I felt not a tap, no, not cuppage, uh uh, but a firm squeeze. You may wonder how firm a four year old’s squeeze could possibly be – I’ll tell you. It was definitely firm enough that if he were around my age he would have gotten seriously freaked out on (i.e. like the snappy “Don’t touch me” that I yelled at the guy in Paris) and possibly slapped for (if I was a little feistier). I turned ONE MORE TIME to find his mom already scolding him and apologizing to me. I don’t think I accepted her apology (in any language).

My teammate was unsuccessfully holding back giggles while all this was going on, knowing that I already didn’t love kids. You might say that maybe I should be happy the little boy thought there was something worth grabbing, and take it as a compliment. But I think the luck of the draw was probably that my butt just came up to his eye level. My teammate should just be grateful she’s 5’4” and didn’t have to deal with being harassed by the four-year-old. Needless to say, this kid didn’t put add any pros to my kid pro-con list.