You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.
A bunch of boys cooped up in a small motel room. It’s claustrophobic. It’s suffocating. It’s like the biggest loser crammed into a Yugo full of rice pudding.
Keeping 12 year old boys quiet in a motel room is like trying to herd cats with tuna fish scented yarn.
As I write this, I am watching 12 year old enthusiasm over flow. I am witnessing pre-teen shananigans with a piercing shrill. I am watching boys jump from bed to bed, pretending to be superman leaping off tall buildings.
These boys are trapped inside this Hampton Inn room, a 10′ by 10′ box, like adrenalized hamsters crabbed in a tube.
The kids should be tired. They should be worn out. We drove far, got in late, got no sleep and got up early, but they are 12 years old and they never stop moving. They are the fountain of youth.
If you could hook them up to an electric grid, you could power the elevators on this floor. Crap, just the kids in this one room could run all the slushee machines in all the 7-11’s in Atlanta.
Why is all this happening? Why so much energy, so much jumping, so much screaming in the halls?
Because we are on another soccer trip and the first game is over. Boredom has set in and the hotel is like Spring Break for pre-teens. The Hampton Inn is like Girls Gone Wild for 12 year old boys with a parental free pass to act a fool.
Getting the kids to game 1 was a military operation. It was like storming the beach. 15 kids. 30 parents. 20 siblings. A dozen more stragglers. The goal, to move them all to a field 20 miles away at 6:30 am.
It’s dark, it’s cold, there is grumpiness in the air.
The boys play well and run their hearts out. They sweat and kick and tie the game.
But now the game is over. So much time to kill. Lunch will only hold them off so long.
Four hours to go and the kids are peaking like Beckham in a tattoo parlor that offers free hair sculpting.
Their laughter is louder, their pushing more physical, their shouting more vociferous.
You can just see the energy level inside this Hampton Inn turn up a notch. It feels like a neutron star beginning to implode.
I am inside a whistling tea pot and my ears are ringing.
Right now, as I write this sentence, one kid is standing on my bed putting the fire alarm cover back on the device.
Why?
Because he and another boy are throwing a small sponge football around the room and the cover has been dislodged and will not reattach.
Bam. Whap. Bonk.
I am watching this laughing internally.
Nobody would allow this in their own home, but the decor of the Hampton Inn is not exactly Buckingham Palace, so it’s sort of a who cares kind of moment.
Bonk.
The ball hits the wall.
Laughter and squeals of delight.
Another boy launches himself into the air and lands on the queen size bed, snagging the ball off the top of the comforter.
He looks like Jerry Rice making a Sports Illustrated catch.
“Why don’t you boys take this into the hallway,” I ask, not giving a damn about the old folks down the hall.
“We got in trouble,” one of the boys says.
“What trouble?”
“A big guy yelled at us in the stairwell.”
“Oh.”
A quick smirk and the football smashes off a lamp.
2 hours till their unbridled energy and youth can be directed onto the pitch.
Sorry Hampton Inn.
And that is crazy.