A Line-Drive in the Sand

I'm a Yankee fan and I live in New England.  There.  I said it!  It has been just about a year since we moved to Portsmouth, and up to this point I've been relatively closeted about my team preference, but I think the days of keeping my opinion to myself on the subject of baseball are over.  It isn't my nature to do so on any topic, really, but especially when it comes to baseball, I am trained to heckle, boast, and back up my boys at all costs.  So, I am a bit confounded.  On one hand, I don't want to alienate people I haven't even met yet.  I don't mind if they want to be Boston fans, and I don't come to some conclusion about who they are as people due to their baseball team preference, but I get the sense that they are not so welcoming.  I have my limits, and clearly my kids are a trigger.

School started this week, and with it came a lot of rainy gross weather.  My little guy was gearing up for his first day of kindergarten on Tuesday, and I realized as we were heading out the door, that he had outgrown his raincoat.  To be honest, it was comically small.  I searched for an alternative in the closet, but found none and so we headed off, ill-fitting rain coat and all.  By Wednesday morning, I had dug up an alternative from a bag of hand-me-downs I'd saved of Kelan's.  A really nice, and correctly sized, Yankee jacket.  I honestly paused as I found it, wondering if it was a bad decision to have him wear this potentially conflict-inducing gear, but I shrugged it off.  Reilly loves the Yankees.  His natural talent for being a Yankee fan was displayed a few short weeks ago when we were at a game at Yankee Stadium.  The boy can distract an outfielder as well as any one in my family, and that is saying something- we are a talented bunch of hecklers.

Imagine my surprise when I picked him up after school and found his jacket on backwards!  It was still raining and so he ran to me from the eaves of the building- no teacher in sight.  I don't know if it was intentional or not, but it was suspicious at best!  I know she is a Red Sox fan, as she mentioned it in her introductory letter- but did she really go so far as to turn my son's jacket inside out to hide the Yankee name?  Was she joking?  And, by the way, why is your baseball team preference a topic worthy of a classroom welcome letter- seriously, couldn't you share a little more about a favorite book or something?

Reilly asked to take the bus this morning, so I didn't have a chance to gather more evidence today-- he wore a sweat shirt instead of his jacket but doesn't seem aware of any issue.  At the bus stop at least half the kids were sporting Red Sox gear.  I mentioned in passing that it was good Reilly wasn't wearing his Yankee coat or there could have been a rumble at the bus stop.  The dad closest to me smiled a bit- I think I detected a little fear in his eyes.

I'm still formulating a game plan for how to move forward on this issue.  I need more data on the jacket, and a face-to-face with Reilly's teacher.  My husband is a dead-end.  He's one of them.  But me, I'm out of the closet and ready to do battle.  I will come armed with oversized foam finger if I need to, but I will not be kept down!  Any suggestions (or additional Yankee gear) are welcomed.