Soccer Cops*

I probably shouldn't have tried to fit a launch in on a school night, but I thought it would be fun and if Mo went to bed more like 9:00 than 8:00 a better chance she'd sleep through the night.

Then, on the way to the launch site, the awesome soccer field I found a few weeks ago, I noticed I was almost out of gas. And that my car was filthy. So I got gas, and a car wash at the Gas & Sip. It was getting pretty gloamy by the time we got there (I'm not sure 'gloamy' is a word, but it ought to be). I wasn't sure we'd have adequate visibility, but the sky was still bright. Plus, Hannah Montana, the latest Midwest Rock Lobster creation (I'd wanted to call her Roseanne Roseannadanna, but Em said, 'I can't say Roseanne Roseannadanna') was relatively large and relatively yellow. I figured we could spot her floating down on the 18" parachute she sported.



I set up my launch rod, and Em explained to the kids who were hanging about a Soccer Mom issue mini-van about the various rockets we'd brought. I loaded Hannah Montana with a C6-7 to give her good loft and plenty of time to arc back down closer to earth before the recover charge deployed that big parachute.

I figured the fading light would make the exhaust trail more visible (which it did), and thought that might make it harder to lose track of the rocket (which it didn't).

About the time we'd given up on visual contact, a guy came over asking me if I was 'about to shoot another one off.'


Well, 'shoot off' isn't really the term, but in dozens of launches at about a half dozen parks I've mainly entertained questions from scout leaders who want to do a rocketry unit or other parents/adults who have just had fond childhood memories of their first experience with rocketry jogged.



I explained to the guy, disappointed to tell him this, but no, it was getting way too dark.

"Good," he said.

Come again? Whuh?

He proceeded to tell me there were kids around, something I'd kind of sleuthed out for myself. I'm like, well, yeah. Two of them are mine. I didn't tell him the younger of the two had spotted a sprinkler that had come on and gone to dance in it.

Maybe I'm slow this way, but it genuinely took me a few exchanges with this guy, who I would guess is approximately my age but much more physically fit and dressed for soccer, before I realized he thought I was a threat.

No, check that. I didn't really think he thought of me as a threat yet: I came to realize he thought he had the authority to ban me from a city park. The anarchist in me kind of took over about now.

I tried to explain to this jock that I didn't require his approbation or permission to fly model rockets in a city park. He tried to explain to me that he owned the park.



Okay, he didn't quite say he owned the park: he said 'We have ownership of the park.'

That's right. A guy in shorts and a t-shirt is telling another guy in shorts and a t-shirt that the first one has ownership of a city park that trumps the rights of the second guy in shorts and a t-shirt.



I know, I lost my cool at this point and that's wrong. But I imagine if I'd tried to suggest to this guy that he didn't have the right to play soccer in a city park, he'd have head-butted me. So what I did next is less extreme than what I envision this jerk would have done.

'Why are you being such an asshole?' I asked. These are, for the record, my exact words. They were sincere but inappropriate as there were honyocks in hearing distance, some of whom might be expected by their parents to treat this particular asshole as a mentor.

Also, in fairness, I'd suggest that while my asking him why he was being an asshole is wrong and bad role modeling on my part, that if you want to avoid being accused of being a duck, it's not the smartest move to waddle around on webbed feet quacking.



Then the question of authority came up. Basically, I called the asshole's hand of statements that all begged the question of Who the Hell do you think you are?

He told me I should talk to his boss. Which I was glad to do. Not that I need his boss' permission to fly rockets either, but I was so pissed off that any challenge was going to be called blindly.

His boss, Kimball Leavitt, seemed to be on the same page. He wanted me to have one of his professionally printed business cards because that would intimidate me. He wanted me to understand that the club he belonged to had contributed $250,000 to develop this soccer complex in a joint venture with the City of Olathe. When I wasn't impressed with that, he shouted loudly enough that spit landed on my face. I think the chain link fence that happened to be between us saved him punching me and me proving that I'm not confrontational enough to engage in fisticuffs, especially with someone who is obviously my better physically.

Full disclosure: after our little exchange which consisted of these two soccer jocks telling me they had authority they don't have and me telling them they were talking out of their asses, I departed with an exclamation of 'Goddamn assholes.' Which was also wrong, even though there weren't kids in earshot. It was from the heart even if it wasn't helpful.

So I came home and typed the following email to Kimball Leavitt, the Technical Director of this militant soccer organization. He hasn't yet responded, but I'm making this an open letter to his ilk who need to learn the difference between public property and private, between a country club and a city park.

First let me apologize for being confrontational and resorting to name calling this evening. It’s not how I like to carry myself, and it hardly qualifies me as a good ambassador for my hobby, model rocketry.

I’d like you to imagine you’d found a great place to practice soccer near your home: a softball complex in a public park. Maybe you and your mates go and kick a soccer ball around there because there isn’t a soccer complex nearby. Not that long ago, this isn’t far fetched, right? Then imagine a guy comes from a softball diamond two diamonds away from the utterly empty one you’d picked for your pickup match and tries to tell you it’s not okay to play soccer in a softball park. Even tells you he’s got ownership of what is obviously a city park.




If I’m any judge of people, I’d guess Kimball Leavitt would not simply quit playing soccer and go meekly home.

Now, to rocketry. Please understand I wouldn’t do anything to endanger children. There are large and high powered model rockets, ones you have to have FAA waivers to fly and certification to buy the motors for, etc. I don’t launch such rockets and if I did it would not be in a public park.

Is it a projectile? You asked me that and I was too emotional to give you the correct answer, which is that it’s not in the sense you mean. When it’s launched, yes, it’s a projectile. It’s launched vertically, not at people. When it spends its fuel and deploys its recovery device, it is no longer a projectile. A parachute, or a streamer in the case of extremely small rockets, is used to destabilize and slow the descent, mainly for the safety of the rocket itself. The paper tubing making the body of the rocket is maybe slightly stiffer than the tube from a roll of paper towels. No kidding, back in the 1950s when kits weren’t available, the tube from a paper towel roll was a popular body tube source.

And I think if you imagine someone furious at you because of the menace of a falling paper towel tube, you might have some idea why I was so taken aback by the notion that model rocketry is incompatible with a soccer park. Two or three ounces of paper tubing, plastic and balsa under a parachute canopy might indeed fall on a kid, I suppose, but I doubt it would do worse than startle him.

For that matter, having been struck in the face by a soccer ball, I’d suggest that soccer balls are massively more dangerous than model rockets. Even under thrust, model rockets won’t do much damage: Estes has flown them into windows and the paper tubing just uncoils, taking the impact and leaving the glass unbroken. I’m not going to try that test on my own windows, but I doubt any soccer ball manufacturers would make that claim.

I’d also be more impressed with your authority to ban rockets from the park if there was anything destructive about it. I police my igniter wires and the plastic plugs that hold them in to be certain I’m not littering. The launch rod has a deflector plate to keep that first burst of exhaust from hitting the ground, so no scorched grass or potential grass fires. Rockets are always launched vertically and always with a recovery device (they idea is to fly a rocket again and again).

They are electronically ignited for safety as well: the fifteen feet of wire between the launch controller and the rocket provide safe distance for me and my kids pushing the launch button, and provides an easy way to call off a launch if, say, a kid was to wander into the perimeter of the launch. That’s why they’re not lit by fuses the way fireworks are: imagine NASA lighting a fuse and running for cover to launch the shuttle. This is rocketry, not pyrotechnics.

If I was tearing up the grass, endangering people, interfering with soccer games (I always pick a field with at least one empty on each side of it for my launches to minimize the chance that I’ll even have a rocket land in someone’s game), or if the park was truly on private property, I might be more impressed with your authority to ban me from the park. Again, I apologize for the hot-headedness this evening, but please understand I was presented with a guy who came out of the blue carrying himself like a schoolyard bully who never grew up. I shouldn’t have taken the bait, but the utterly outrageous nature of the orders he was trying to give took me off guard.

I’m not trying to make enemies when I say I’ll be back with my kids to launch again. We come in peace.

I will launch rockets again at Lone Elm. I'm not trying to make enemies, as the end of my letter states. I'm just not going to comply with bullying. I tried that back in grade school and it doesn't work.

*Note my restraint: I didn't refer to them as the Soccer Nazis or the Soccer Gestapo, tempting though those appellations were. Maybe it was that crush I recently had on a Jewish painter, but bullyish jocks just don't measure up on the atrocity scale. The Soccer Cops are really just pitiful imitations, blessedly impotent to enforce their stupidity on others.