Napping one afternoon earlier this week, I was succumbing to the drowsy effects of a cough mixture I had taken.

Barely a few minutes into dreamland, I got a call on my mobile. It was my eldest.

Dad, I’m in a bit of an emergency. Can you help me?

Words that will wake any parent up in a jiffy! Is he alright? Was he robbed? In an accident? Or…?

The next words however proved anti-climactic.

I left my soccer boots home and my game’s about to start. Can you bring them to me please?

Welcome to the world of teen parenting!

If you were me, what would you do? Return to your nap? Or respond to your 16-year-old son’s call for help without the slightest hesitation?

Honestly, a part of me wished he would leave me alone and let me return to dreamland. I mean, one must sleep in the bed one’s made right? (Pun fully intended) Is it my fault he forgot his own sports equipment? Is this his first rodeo, I mean soccer game? No. He’s been playing it actively for more than a year now.

Should I not use this as a teaching moment to help him learn the importance of consequences? So it won’t happen again? After all, he’s not six, he’s 16. Old enough to not bother his dad with something like soccer boots. Or for that matter, soccer (or what’s referred to everywhere in the world, except the US of A, as football).

And wouldn’t I be remiss as an enlightened parent for letting such a teachable moment slip by, capitulating and dashing over in the family car to bring the boots to him (he was with his buddies at a football field some 15 minutes drive from home)?

Will I be accused of pampering my son?

And for what? Football?

A game I’ve loathed since young?!

I don’t want to dig up the past but the fact of the matter is I grew up hating sports. Especially when large or round objects were involved. (I’m cool with marbles, though not ping pong)

Maybe it sounds crazy. Which boy doesn’t enjoy outdoor play, right? After all, it was the 1970’s. What else do little boys do then? Stay home and read? Draw stick figures and rough house with PlayMobile figurines?

Yes and yes.

Anything but kick a ball down the field, thank you very much.

But there was school PE (Physical Education) almost daily. And almost always there will be a time set aside for, what else, boys to play football. I would try to get out of it by feigning a flu symptom, or just finding a place in school to hide. But those tactics rarely work. So, I did the next best thing. I would volunteer to play defence because I figured that’s the position least likely to encounter the ball on a continuous basis.

That’s when I discovered something. The ball has a life of its own and would pursue me! Often halfway across the field.

Sure, you can call me paranoid. But that was my lived experience. And perpetual nightmare! Even when I’m headed home, walking past a bunch of boys playing football on the field, I swear the ball would somehow spot me, like some heat-seeking missile, and come after me.

And no, I refuse to be one of those bystanders who happily kick the ball back to the players from the sideline. Nope. Instead, I would hightail out of the range of that infernal ball lickety-split!

So yes, football is my eternal bane.

It doesn’t help that I live in a football-crazy part of the world. Come to think of it, other than North America, is there any part of the world that isn’t obsessed with a sport that’s been around since the mid19th century (possibly even earlier)?

Unfortunate too that my part of the world is half a day time difference from the part of the world that frequently televises their league games across the globe because they are at the highest level of the sport. And the envy of young men everywhere.

That means, if my son wants to stay awake at 3 am in the morning to watch matches held in different parts of Europe, even if it’s a school week, who am I to say no?

And because the only way to watch is on my laptop (we’ve been putting up at my in-law’s since March while our new home is under renovation, and their TV doesn’t access web pages well), I’ve had to decide: surrender my login password to my son, or wake up with him to login myself. The former means I would need to keep changing my passwords (yes, I’m the sort of parent that doesn’t believe my kids should have easy access to my devices), while the latter means I lose sleep.

No guesses which I pick!

And no guesses what I did after my son’s frantic phone call.

I leapt out of bed, grabbed my car keys and his dreadful football boots, and drove like a Formula 1 hopeful to pass them to my dear son (the boots, not the keys).

Because I’m a father. And that’s what fathers do.

(Including, once just once, sitting through a football match on a blistery Tuesday afternoon just because)