Just Another Dad.....for a day

It was ten years ago, and it was hot.  Even for Fall Fair, it was a hot day.  I was cooking ribs on my smoker, and I saw him.  Something made me look up, and I saw him park his Range Rover and get out.  He was in jeans and a t-shirt and he wore a ball cap.  He wasn’t in disguise. I knew who he was the instant I saw him.  He got a worn folding chair from the back of the dusty Range Rover, and walked slowly, nonchalantly across the parking lot to the soccer field.  He didn’t look about.  He didn’t greet anyone.  He didn’t have an entourage.  It was just him, and he didn’t stop for a coke, or a hotdog.  He just went to the soccer field.  Others saw him, too, and they looked briefly so as not to be rude, and then looked away and went back to what they were doing.

It was a good soccer match.  I don’t remember who won.  I took a break from cooking ribs so I could watch the game.  In all, there were probably 75 parents watching.  We cheered and groaned as dictated by the game.  The boys played hard, and then the game was over.

He folded his chair, and waited unnoticed in a small crowd of parents waiting for his son to come over for a post-game greeting.  Other parents milled about some waiting for the same purpose.   The coaches did their post-game commentary, and the players of both teams trotted over to their parents.  By this time, word had spread that he was here, but still he stood alone in a crowd.  His son and a couple of friends came to him.  They spoke, and laughed, and smiled, and then the boys trotted back over to the bench, and he walked slowly across the field to the parking lot.  He put his folding chair in the back of his Range Rover and got in.  He drove away.

Sometimes we forget that even rock stars have kids, and sometimes they need to be just another  ‘dad’.  On this day, Wardlaw’s whole community of baby boomers and aging hippies stood back and let a rock star be just another dad for a day.  The man got to watch his kid play soccer and no one bothered him.  No one asked him for a photo.  No one asked him for an autograph.  No one spoke to him at all.  That was the day Bruce Springsteen came to The Wardlaw Hartridge School, and if only for that day, got to be just another dad watching his kid play soccer.