Mini Rugby and The Seven Deadly Sins

Photo by Chayse Griffin on Unsplash

On Saturday morning, I reckoned hate was too strong a word. As were detest and abhor and also despise and probably loath. So, I channelled my inner better, asked for forgiveness, remembered God loves everyone, in spite of some being hard to like, and decided I’d settle for strongly disliking the mini rugby parents. But before I get to that, I want to begin with a mathematical problem. It involves drivers.

Six people live in the Sloan house, four adults and two children. There are three cars in the driveway. All the adults are in possession of a clean driving licence, sort of. Not all drivers are insured on all vehicles. Two of the drivers share a car. This car is a manual and smells a bit and has a magic tree and could do with a good hoover. One driver does not drive one of the other driver’s cars not because it is kept fastidiously tidy and no one is really allowed to touch it, but for other reasons, she does not wish to discuss. One of the six people in the house does not rise until around 4pm at weekends so requires no transportation. She is the favourite child. Two members of the household play hockey. The matches are never in the same place nor at the same time. One of the non-adult hockey players cannot drive and is always offering her friends lifts. One of the non-hockey playing adults coaches tennis. And so, every Friday evening, when there is as yet no delightful news about frozen pitches, the Sloan family plans its Saturday logistics. Sometimes these plans have to factor in things like the closure of a main arterial route which will bring the city to a standstill or an additional stop-off to buy oranges. One adult member of the family is mainly interested in solving this mathematical problem because the outcome determines what time he should put his name down for golf.

And so, on Saturday morning past, I find myself doing the run to our local, what they like to call, multi-sports complex, to drop my eldest daughter off to earn a minimum wage teaching five-year-olds how to hold a racket. “It’ll be busy,” she said, “in the carpark”. “Mini rugby is on”. But I was feeling fairly confident and even though I struggled to find the entrance because of the enormous number of vehicles lining both sides of the road, I said, “it’s ok, I’m not parking, I’m just doing a loop”. And this so-called multi-sports complex uses an acronym which stands for Church of Ireland Young Men's Society but on Saturday morning, there was nothing Christian or gentlemanly about it because as I performed the first part of my loop and did a quick right turn to complete the second, I discovered my route was blocked by what I can only describe as an estate car and it had an English registration and these details are not really relevant because the main point was that it wasn’t just double-parked, it was triple-parked and whilst you may have been able to squeeze a Mini or a Fiat 500 or one of those smart things through the gap, I don’t drive a Mini or a Fiat or a smart, I drive a large automobile and this is not my fault and I don’t want to be judged for this or reminded of my privilege. I have a lot of children and one of them has a goalie kit. And so, I came to a sudden halt, evicted the coach, and told her to disappear before there was a scene. I considered what I could do. There was now a car behind me. Reversing was not an option and besides, my thran had set in. Why should I have to reverse when I should be able to move forward. I debated whether to ring my husband, but I didn’t know what tee he’d be on and besides, I wasn’t going to be one of those women. And I knew, I just knew, it was one of the mini rugby crowd because when I got out to take a closer look, there was a child seat in the back and much debris. And in what can only be described as a cloud of fury, I made my way through the gate to the grass where I could see them standing in their dry robes, holding their coffee cups and chitty-chatting, and then I realised I wasn’t prepared for this moment. I was wearing a very unflattering sweatshirt and no make-up, and I hadn’t even washed because I was after all, only doing a loop and then I was going home and heading out for a run. I tapped one of them on the shoulder. She turned and looked at me as if I was a beetle. “Is there anyone in charge here?” I said. “You might find someone in reception,” she replied still looking at me as if I was a beetle. But I’d never ever seen anyone in reception and now my abandoned seven-seater was adding to the chaos. “Do you think I could get through that gap,” I said to a man who was out for a walk, and he studied it for a bit and whistled through his teeth, and said “well you could risk it if you want but I’m not sure”. And I thought well if a man wouldn’t risk it, I’m not risking it. And then I had another moan to a couple of dads and I knew they were dads because they were dressed like dads and they said the carpark was a disaster but there were roadworks and an Orange Order parade and I didn’t find that very helpful as actually the fault wasn’t out there in society, it was right here in this complex somewhere in amongst the mini rugby parents, and I thought I’m going to have to get out somehow and so I flattened my wing mirrors and held my breath and I’m not joking, there was approximately 0.5cm between me and the other cars and there was a lot of sensor activity going on and a woman who was walking her dog stopped to watch and I went backwards and forwards and thankfully not too sideways and eventually I escaped and as I drove off into freedom, I thought what is mini rugby anyway, what is the point of it?

And I decided that inconsiderate parking should be one of the seven deadly sins. Because whilst I know they’re normally pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth, these are quite generic and maybe we need ones which are more specific and grounded and highlight the devastating impact that sin can have on others. And selfish parking is probably top of my list. And I’d add some others like not picking up your dog mess because how many people’s days are ruined by something they didn’t ask for on their shoe, and then there’s taking the credit for someone else’s work which happened a lot when I worked in academia, and also turning a blind eye to toxic behaviour like bullying because it’s more important to protect your own position, and sending a message at the last minute to say you’re not coming to something someone else has organised when they’ve gone to a lot of effort, and of course, there’s “but we knew nothing about this” which is the worst sin of all.

And when I got home from the multi-sports complex, I sent an email. And it wasn’t a rude email. It was a perfectly courteous, you might need to look into the parking situation email because it’s dangerous and there are small kids running around the range rovers and what if an ambulance needed to do a loop. But I never got a reply and so I added not responding to a warning to my list of seven deadly sins.

And this week, I finished reading Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout which I have been savouring and taking little bites of every day because it is wonderful and brings together all her characters like Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton and Bob Burgess and even Katherine Caskey who is in my favourite novel Abide With Me and is struck dumb age five with grief at her mother’s death but is now a social worker in her sixties and I think we’re meant to take comfort in that. And Bob and Lucy go for walks, and they talk, and turns out they love each other but they can’t be together because Lucy has William and Bob has Margaret, but Bob always sits down and has a secret cigarette with Lucy because Margaret would disapprove of him smoking. And Lucy is questioning what the point of people’s lives are, what do they mean, as there are so many unrecorded lives out there, yet people just live them anyway. And some of these people are sin-eaters, she says, they eat the sins of others, they carry the weight of others’ mistakes. And Lucy and Olive share these stories with each other, so these lives don’t go unrecorded, and Olive says what connects them is that the people live and have hope and love and suffer and that’s the point and eventually Lucy tells Olive about Bob and sometimes she’s weeping and so is Olive and sometimes her face is glowing with happiness and so is Olive’s. And Lucy is a writer, but she says she’s never going to write this story down because Olive is now the receptacle, and Olive says she’s going to die and this should be out there and Lucy says tough, she gave it to her to carry and it’s in her now.

And I have no idea what this has to with mini rugby, it’s just a loose narrative about sin and how it’s better if people don’t have to eat yours and that’s what life is really too, I guess, just a loose narrative held together with a bit of love and sharing stories of hope and suffering, and bad parking.