Protest: Down with snacks!

I know I'm risking unpopularity by saying this. My husband told me, "You are in the minority." I'm sure he is right. All the other soccer moms go along with the program. Yet, perhaps somewhere across this great nation there are 3 or 5 other soccer moms who feel as I do. It is for them that I write. For them, I risk alienation on sidelines from Mt. Airy to Hagerstown.

I really resent the concept of the soccer snack.

It probably started out innocently enough. Perhaps there were a few coaches or generous team mothers who often brought a boatload of Oreos and Gatorade to the games. This made the other parents feel guilty, so they decided to share the task of feeding overpriced junk food to the athletes. So, they started out with a voluntary sign-up, which wasn't really voluntary, given the peer pressure.

What have we now? We have an obligatory list onto which our names automatically are written, which binds us to cram one more task into our overwrought brains. Now, not only do we need to discover where on God's green earth West Mountain Elementary School is (past the 12th dairy farm on the left), we also need to bring goodies for everybody. And a chair. And sippy cups for the preschooler. And water. And wipes. And bug spray. And a potty, just in case.

The thing is, lots of people bring snacks anyway, particularly if there are little siblings. When buying snacks for everybody, there's always that concern of just how healthy will the kids tolerate vs. just how junky you can go before the parents disapprove. And then you have all those food allergies out there, threatening to swell the goalie at the mere suggestion of peanuts. Couldn't we just bring snacks for our own families if we want?

One year, we had a coach who seemed (thankfully) to be fairly against sugary snacks, so he suggested that we all stick to the same snack: oranges. This was better in some ways. However, have you ever bought 12 oranges off season? It equals the cost of throwing a smallish party. And then you have the sticky-hands factor, so bring wipes and a trash bag also.

The idea originally was to spread around the cost and effort. Only now, it increases everybody's cost and effort. It's similar to the idea behind governmental health care. Instead of no one person paying more than others, everybody pays. Besides, do the kids always need a snack?

P.S. to my kids' fine coaches. Ignore this. I'll bring the snack as scheduled, as every good soccer mom does. I stop just short of real activism and merely bitch about things.