The Norway Cup is one of the biggest sporting events in the world, with tens of thousands of players and literally thousands of football matches (that’s “soccer” for our American readers) over the course of a week. I was a referee there several years in a row during the 2000s, and there are many stories I could tell; this one is one of them.

This time, though, the story is about the time Mother Nature threw a spanner in the works. A few days into the tournament, it started raining. A lot. The tournament was held on a huge open grass field, and as the rain kept coming, water started building up on some of the pitches. Playing football in the rain isn’t a problem in itself, but when there’s standing water out there, it gets a bit difficult. You’re not allowed to pick up the ball and run with it like you do in American football, so it usually rolls around on the grass when the players dribble or pass it. That’s hard to do when there are several inches of standing water on the pitch.

I was refereeing a match for some twelve-year-olds when it started to become clear that the pitch was getting unusable. The ball wouldn’t roll on the grass, stopping in the puddles that kept growing in size and depth. Eventually, most of the pitch was covered in standing water.

We tried our best to continue, but at the half-time break, I called the coaches over.

Me: “I don’t think we can continue this, do you?”

Coach #1: “No, the goals are flooded. The ball stops before the goal line every time you take a shot!”

Coach #2: “Yeah, this isn’t football anymore; it’s water polo!”

We had a laugh about the absurd situation, and I notified them that I was officially halting the match and that I would inform the organizers. As I packed up my stuff to leave, I could see the kids playing in the puddles, jumping and sliding in the water, which at this point was literally going up to our ankles.

In the organizers’ office, though, they were less sympathetic.

Organizer: “You stopped a match?”

Me: “Yes, on pitch twenty-four. There’s water—”

Organizer: “You’re not supposed to stop matches because of rain.”

Me: “Actually, I am. When the pitch is unusable, the referee is the one who decides whether the match can continue.”

Organizer: “You’re not supposed to do that. Not playing a match creates holes in the schedule. This creates a lot of problems for us.”

Me: “I don’t know what to tell you. There’s standing water all over the pitch. It isn’t possible to play football there at the moment. The players are currently swimming in it.”

The man seemed frustrated, but he didn’t offer any solution, instead just going around in circles and mumbling that I shouldn’t have stopped the game from being played. As this kind of thing is the organizers’ task to deal with rather than mine, I left him to handle it and went back to the building where we stayed during the tournament.

Not half an hour later, messages started popping up on our phones as well as being posted on the official posters in the cafeteria. Apparently, the organizers had been flooded with cancellations mere minutes after I left their building. It turned out that my match just happened to be on the worst pitch; it was in a small depression on the field so that water would accumulate there before anywhere else, meaning I was the first referee in the tournament to cancel a match.

The next day, the national newspapers ran stories from the tournament with pictures of kids happily splashing around in the puddles. The grass field had turned into a one-foot-deep lake. The organizers did (amazingly) manage to save the tournament by moving hundreds of matches to astroturf pitches all around the city, driving referees around in cars, and sending buses to transport players.

I still wonder about that one organizer I talked to, though. I mean, either he was just oblivious to the amount of water out there, or he genuinely thought football could be played in a lake.

Related:
Please Observe Our Looks Of Disdain

My good friend uses a wheelchair. She and her partner have reserved seats at our MLS (Major League Soccer) team’s stadium.

Once, they showed up to their seats to find a couple sitting in them. The couple refused to leave. My friend and her partner went to security, who removed the couple.

Woman: “Why does the girl in the wheelchair get special attention?!”

In 2008, my son and I drove to Oklahoma to watch the PGA (Professional Golfers’ Association) championship tournament on the course instead of on TV. We took as many bottles of water as we could carry (knowing the outlandish prices inside) and a three-legged folding camper stool, as we were going to move around to different fairways.

We “camped” along a fairway, and after a period of time, I stood to stretch my legs and walk a short distance from my stool. When I returned, a young man was sitting on my stool.

Me: “That’s my stool, and you need to get off of it.”

Young Man: “You weren’t using it.”

Me: “That doesn’t change the fact that it’s my stool, and I’m telling you to get off.”

He finally got up.

A few minutes later, I looked toward the tee box, and there he was, occupying someone else’s deck chair, only to be told — I could tell by body language of the owner — to get out of that one.

Before we left to move to another fairway, I saw him in another deck chair.

We saw him come in with his two young kids, carrying kids’ deck chairs for them and nothing for himself. All the while he was moving up and down the fairway sitting in other people’s chairs, his kids were sitting next to us eating snacks. While we were there, he paid very little attention to his kids.

Just watching him, we could tell he felt entitled to use whatever he wanted.

My cousin’s kid is playing baseball against a rival school. It’s the final game of the year, so I came to support him.

Cousin: “Here. I got you some food.”

She hands me a hot dog, but it’s wrapped up in flatbread instead of in a bun.

Me: “Is this… garlic naan?”

Cousin: “Yeah, it’s traditional. ‘Cause of the mascot.”

Me: “Huh? I thought the mascot was just a tiger.”

Cousin: “It is now, but… for a long time, before anyone worried about that kind of thing, the mascot was the Indian Chief. Some kid would wear a fake war bonnet and dance around with a bow and arrow and all that. Then, one day, someone from [Native American Tribe] pointed out that this was kind of offensive, and also all the traditions were wrong, so we stopped.”

Me: “So, is the bread just a pun?”

Cousin: “No, that came after. They had a big meeting about the new mascot, and they’d already made this big display where the cheerleaders would carry around giant letters that spelled out ‘INDIAN CHIEF’. So, in this meeting, the owner of the local curry takeout place said, ‘I’ve got the solution: my restaurant sponsors your team, and all you need to do is throw away the I in “chief”.’”

Me: “So… why the tigers?”

Cousin: “The [County] school board got upset because people were more excited about the food than the game. So, the restaurant owner said, ‘To heck with it; let’s do tiger habitat awareness instead.’”

I’m volunteering as a referee for First Lego League, a competition for mostly middle-school-aged kids building Lego robots to complete various challenges on a table for points.

I try to make things fun for the kids as much as possible; I want the whole experience to be positive enough for the kids to come back next year even if they don’t have a perfect robot after all. We have to wait for all tables to set up before a match can begin, which gives me some time to talk with the kids.

Me: “I have a very important task for you all. They’re going to announce every team’s name before the match. When they say yours, I want you all to cheer louder than any of the other teams. Can you do that?”

Boy: “Yeah!”

The entire team is clearly the loudest and most energetic when their team name is called, with the first boy I talked to being the most energetic of his team.

Me: “You were definitely the loudest. Just for that, I’ll double your starting points.”

Boy: “Really?! He’s going to double it!”

Me: “Do you know what your starting points are?”

Boy: “No, but it’s double!”

Me: “You start with a zero…”

The boy doesn’t seem to hear me. He instead goes to try to tell one of the adults waiting back a little further back where we make coaches and parents wait that we are doubling their score.

Teammate: “I don’t think he’s listening anymore. At least he’s happy.”

We had to start the match about then, so I never did get to clarify things to the first kid. Hopefully, he wasn’t too disappointed when someone finally let him in on the joke.

Related:
Please, Parents, Resist The Urge To Over-Help!
Faith In The Future Of Humanity: Restored!