“C‘mon honey! Pull! Pull!” “Go! Go! Go!”
“Keep going! Keep going!”
It was a humid summer evening at a local community pool. The place was seething with people: all manner of children from two competing swim teams, a smattering of team officials with whistles and white polo shirts, dozens of parent volunteers with timers slung around their necks, and a great number of agitated parent onlookers.
“On your mark–” came the tinny, amplified announcement. A line of skinny 8-and-under children trembled in the ready position. The timer holders stood silently, waiting for the flash of light that would signal the start of the race.
Simultaneously came the flash and a loud buzzer: “Aaaangh!” The children leaped into the pool and began thrashing their way to the other end.
The spectators cheered and shouted.
“You can do it!” yelled a mother.
Shouts of “Yay!” and “Go!” and “Come on!” came from the mob of older children waiting for it to be their turn.
“Move, move, move!” yelled a father.
Then, rising from the din, came the piercing voice of a man who was especially intent on motivating his daughter.
“C’MON! C’MON! C’MON!” he screamed, his body bent forward and his eyes fixed on the child’s little thrashing limbs.
The man’s handsome face was distorted with effort. Veins pulsed in his temples. Tendons stood out from his neck.
“GO! GO! GO!” he screamed. Several of the parents near him, who had themselves been yelling, fell silent and turned to look. Children, too, gazed at the man.
“GO! GO! GO!” The father’s expression was one of fury. It brought to mind the face of the decapitated Medusa, on the shield painted by Caravaggio. In the painting, the monster’s mouth is open, her eyes are wide and rageful, and her hair of snakes waves impotently over her bloody, ragged neck.
The man screaming as his small daughter swam a single length of the pool was unfortunately not, like the beheaded gorgon, powerless. He was fully alive, full of intensity, the very embodiment of the War God of Scary Parenting.
And now his child was slipping into third place.
“NO!” he roared. “YOU CAN GO FASTER THAN THAT! C’MON! C’MON! C’MON! NOOOOOOO!”
The 25-meter race was over. A new group of 8-and-unders was already lining up. Gorgon Man collected his daughter and they disappeared back into the throng of visiting families.
Later that evening, in the dressing room, two girls were overheard talking about the father’s effect on the swim meet.
“It’s nice when parents cheer but it’s scary when they yell,” said one.
“It adds so much pressure.”
“He didn’t care about being nice, he just wanted their team to win.”
“Yeah, he was just yelling at her. He wasn’t giving her any support.”
During that race, with the pounding of her own blood in her ears and the splashing of the water, the girl probably never even hear her father screaming. Yet every other child did. And in the tumult of her own race, the child probably didn’t even get a glimpse of her father’s infuriated, empurpled face. Unfortunately, everyone else did.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
