The Little League Coach

Farrell as Alexander the Great in Alexander (2004).

Guest Post for The Little League Coach
Cup Stories: The 40-year-old Cup Virgin
by Little League Mom (AKA E. Peevie)

As I mentioned previously, I am a girl. I have never worn a cup, bought a cup, or thought about cups—until C. Peevie came along. One minute he was wearing onesies and swinging a tiny plastic bat, and the next minute he was signing up for Little League, and I was faced with the heretofore unexamined task of cup-buying.

You would think cup-buying would fall naturally into the domain of fatherhood. You would be wrong. Mr. Peevie explained that he had no experience with athletic cups, either. They just weren’t considered standard equipment for swing choir and marching band .

Yes, I married a nerd.

So cup-buying fell to me. After my less-than-satisfying experience at Walgreen’s , I decided to head over to an actual sporting goods store. I hoped against hope that the purchasing experience would be intuitive: I’d go to the athletic cup aisle, there’d be a package (oops!) clearly marked for a medium-sized 10-year-old, I’d buy it, it would fit, and we’d be done with the whole cup saga.

It was not meant to be.

When I got to the cup department, I found that cup sizes ranged from small to X-large. These designations were completely without meaning to me, since I had no idea at what age boys started wearing cups. Did six-year-olds wear cups? And if so, would the cup size be much different for a 10-year-old? Would I be insulting my son inadvertently if I bought him the smallest size?

So I looked around for someone to help me navigate the stormy seas of cup buying. The first person I asked shrugged her shoulders. I fully expected her to get on the store PA system and announce, “Customer needs assistance in the Cup Department! Customer needs assistance in the Cup Department!”

Instead, she pointed me to a guy behind a counter, and I headed over, knowing that this experience had a zero chance of ending without humiliation. Unfortunately, the service associate looked like Colin Farrell , and I started blushing even before I said the word, “Cup.”

“I’m kind of new at this cup-buying thing,” I started off. “You might say I’m a cup-buying virgin.” OMG , I thought to myself. Did I just say that out loud? To Colin Farrell?

I recovered quickly. “So could you explain cup sizes to me? I need to buy one for my 10-year-old,” I said. “Son. My 10-year-old son,” I added nervously.

Colin Farrell smiled benignly at me. “Well, how big is he?” he asked.

I gulped. “You mean, down there?” I whispered.

“Ah, no,” Colin Farrell said, suppressing a snort. “Just in general. Is he small for his age? Or is he a big boy ?”

“No, no,” I said quickly. “No, he’s an average-size 10-year old.” And then I accidentally looked right at his crotch.

“Oh, crap,” I thought to myself as I jerked my eyes back up. “I just looked right at his crotch!”

“We can probably go with a small size cup for your son,” Colin Farrell smirked at me. I grabbed it from his hand and ran for the door.

Tune in to the next Little League Mom guest post: Cup Stories, continued.

For more from this author, check out The Green Room (http://greenroomthoughts.blogspot.com/) for posts on six word memoirs, nepotism, finding happiness, and much more!