Vuvuzela

This really was mostly a terrible day. Bad news all over the place. Rainstorms.

The thing that really saved the day was a vuvuzula. . . c'mon, you know, the South African horns that fans played incessantly during the World Cup this past summer? Yes, those.

There are fields behind our house where the city youth soccer leagues play. On Saturdays and many weekday evenings in spring and autumn, the fields are full of kids playing and parents cheering them on. Tonight there were probably three games going simultaneously. It doesn't get loud in our backyard, but you can definitely hear the whistles and the cheers and the choices encouraging (read: screaming at) their players.

I was grilling up a couple of hamburgers when I heard the monotone hum of a single vuvuzela. These things are meant to be played by the thousands. See here:

And yet one dude a.) managed to get one, b.) decided to bring it to a suburban youth soccer league, and c.) actually chose to play the thing. I salute that man and his unabashed willingness to play a two-foot-long plastic horn at his kids' sporting events, certainly embarrassing them in front of their friends. Things that are blatantly out of place make me laugh.

You may not understand me, and that's okay. The point is that, for whatever reason, I found this vuvuzela incident—and the image of a single, proud parent bellowing out the occasional B♭ on his plastic horn to his daughter's dismay—completely hilarious, and it helped a tough day to suck less.