It's just amazing how WRONG we human beings can be about things, right? Especially when we form opinions BEFORE we know anything about the subject (or person!) at hand.
Take what happened to me when I went to my son's first lacrosse game last week.
OK, I had never attended a lacrosse game before, primarily because I didn't have to. Until this spring, none of our boys had taken up the sport, and why else would I go? Especially since I figured that lacrosse was this majorly wimpy game played by northeastern prep school boys named "Skip" or possibly "Chip" who had girlfriends named "Muffy" or possibly "Buffy."
SKIP: Hark! There goes the ball!
CHIP: Let's give chase!
SKIP: After you, Chip.
CHIP: No, after you, Skip.
So. Anyway. I went to the game with REALLY low expectations. I even took a book and some knitting to distract myself when I got bored — which I figured would happen as soon as the game started.
Only I didn't. Get bored, that is.
Quite frankly, it's tough to get bored when 20 adolescent boys — including your own son — start whacking each other (hard!) with big sticks. Whack! Whack! Whack!
I was in total shock! To tell you the truth, I could not believe what I was seeing. A rock fight, perhaps? A rumble? A felony assault? A student uprising somewhere in Paris? A confrontation between Ranger and Islander fans? A peasant revolt?
FIRST PEASANT: Hark! There goes the Duke!
SECOND PEASANT: Let's give chase!
FIRST PEASANT: So that we can whack him!
SECOND PEASANT: Ye don't have to ask twice!
At one point, a player was taken out of the game for "unnecessary roughness," which prompted me to ask my neighbor, "BUT HOW COULD THEY TELL?"
In case you haven't been to a lacrosse game yourself, it looks like a combination of football and ice hockey, except that you wear fewer clothes — helmet, gloves, a jersey, some shorts, a couple of pads, and possibly some underwear, although when it comes to boys, who really knows about the underwear part?
Anyway, that's about it in the clothes department. Which means a lot of that stick-whacking is landing on bare flesh. Ouch!
After I came home from the game, I got online and Googled "lacrosse" so I could figure out what I had just seen. Here's what I discovered:
1. That it's the oldest sport in North America.
2. That it was developed in the 15th century by Native Americans (not named "Skip" and definitely not "Chip") who wanted to stay in shape in the off-season.
3. That games went from sunup to sundown and lasted for two to three days with no breaks — except for the times when the Jazz Dancers stepped onto the field and threw out plastic balls to spectators.
4. That anywhere from 100 to 1,000 people could play on a given team AT THE SAME TIME.
5. Which meant that there was even MORE stick-whacking going on than what I witnessed at West High School the other day.
6. That lacrosse is definitely NOT a sport for the faint of heart.
And I feel really, really bad I ever thought it was.
Just goes to show that you should never make up your mind about a subject — until you actually know something about it.
E-mail: acannon@desnews.com