• The risk for injury is too great. I don’t want my son to suffer from concussions.
  • It’s a big commitment. Most youth football teams have several practices a week that may run upwards of two hours each. Unfortunately, as a single parent, I can’t make that sort of commitment.
  • My son is made of glass.
  • He’s showing a lot of promise in his cello lessons, and game days overlap with his current lesson schedule.
  • After me and my wife Janine finalized our divorce, I felt incredibly lonely. More lonely than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I trudged through my days, weeks, months, in a prison of repetition and familiarity. “Take a class at the local college,” one of my co-workers yelled at me enthusiastically, as if that would somehow change all the missed phone calls, the long drawn-out arguments, the meaningless sex, the years of unhappiness, the unforgiving lawyers, the stacks of paperwork, and the inevitable divorce. And so I did. I took a glass blowing class. It was the first on the sign-up list, and I was too lazy to see if they had slacklining. It was in this class that I created my son Steven, my companion in life, my savior, my prism that turns the cruel and isolated beam of harsh light into a beautiful rainbow.
  • As a parent, the less I can encourage him to use violence as a solution, the better.
  • Although my child is not currently alive, per say, I believe that at some point in the future he will be struck by some sort of magic—a bolt of lightning during a thunderstorm, a wizard’s spell, or maybe one of my divorce tears will happen to land on him when I’m sobbing uncontrollably at night—and my glass boy will come alive to hug me and cry with me and be the son I’ve always wanted and deserved.
  • I would rather he spend his time exploring hobbies related to science and art, reading, or learning a second language.
  • Because my son is made of glass, I worry about the aftermath if one of the flesh-made boys tackles him. He would absolutely shatter into several thousand pieces, shards that would be hard to pick up and find in the dense grass of the football field.
  • I think the culture surrounding football, romanticizing antiquated gender politics, could negatively affect my child’s development.
  • If my son were to be shattered by another boy, a flesh boy, I would also worry about the flesh boy being impaled by my boy’s fragmented remains. I have no doubt this would lead to an argument with another parent.
  • Football is known for its unforgiving and harsh conditioning, something I don’t think is appropriate for a child of such a young age. Let the kids be kids!
  • I’m worried about the cost of running and maintaining a private glass blowing studio for the sole purpose of repairing my boy's body when he inevitably shatters due to another boy tackling him. Glass blowing is very expensive, and I can’t stand to lose my boy. It would destroy me to lose the one thing in this world that I love and that one thing that loves me.
  • But if my glass boy were irreconcilably shattered, I would really like to experiment with different colors or sandblasting on my next boy.
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