Miasmatic Review

Growing pains.

Poor Boopie. As you recall he decided to play tackle football this year. For the last week and a half the coach has been running practice 3 hours a day, 6 days a week. Now that school has started, he is cutting it down to 2 hours a day still 6 days a week. Boopie being one of the video game generations is not used to all this physical activity. Since Tuesday he has been complaining of soreness in his calf muscle.

I’m pretty sure the boy is suffering from a bad case of lactic acidosis. Especially since the pain is gradually going away. Boopie just doesn’t take to pain or soreness too well. I’ve told him that he needs to listen to the coach and do everything he says, even if he doesn’t want to. During practice he muscles were so sore that between plays he was kneeling down. The coach told him to stop kneeling and stand. After the next play, Boopie kneeled down again. Once more the coach told him to stop kneeling between plays, if he does it again he’s going to take a lap. So guess what Boopie does two plays later? That’s right, he kneels down. The coach has him run a lap around the field.

He was not happy about having to do that at all. On the ride home he was complaining about it. I just pointed out, “If you had listened to me about listening to the coach and doing what he says, you would not have had to run the lap. So who’s fault do you think it was that you had to take a lap?” Boopie, “The Coach.” Me, “No, it was yours. He told you not to do something and you did it anyway. He told you what the consequence was going to be if you did it again, and you did it anyway. You made a conscious choice to disobey the coach. It’s your fault.” Boopie, “But my legs hurt, and he didn’t care.” Me, “You’re right he didn’t care, because he’s also a football player and he knows the best way to get the soreness out is to work it out, not rest and let the lactic acid build back up in your muscles.”

Needless to say, Boopie is sitting in the other room lamenting his decision to kneel in the middle of practice. Now if I could only get him to quit whining about his muscles being sore.