Pathetic Adult Displays in Front of Kids

[Hamish McBagpipe]

I was at a Christmas party on the weekend at a friend of my gf's. Most of those attending were married and half a dozen kids were there in and out of the host's son's room and basement TV room. Everything was fine, drinking happily away, when some guy I didn't know calls for his son out of the basement. He was about 10 or 11. The Dad tells us the boy sings in a church choir and then tells junior to sing us a song/hymn/whatever. The mortified kid starts to sing, but he can't get through the whole song. He stops, on the verge of tears, and his Dad says, "Don't you ever embarass me like that again." I would have said something but it all happened pretty fast and I could only bitch about it later. Anyway, I think this kind of stuff really [censored] kids up worse, in some cases, than physical abuse.

I remember playing hockey at about the same age. The coach's kid was our best player. There was an ongoing argument about ice time. Finally, during a game, a parent takes the coach to the bathroom and beats him up. The coach comes back, glasses broken and a bloody nose,
and takes his kid away. The guy who beat him up becomes our coach for the rest of the game. As a kid, I didn't really know wtf was going on, but I'm sure it screwed up those kids pretty bad. I know this is pretty common stuff amongst rabid sports parents.

As for me, I remember when my Dad showed up drunk to parent/teacher night when I was in about grade 5. Jesus Christ, what an [censored]. And he's acting like they are not going to know. That was about the time me and him parted ways.

Every time I recall an instance like this I usually laugh but mostly in amazement that the grownups could have been such dinks. I'm pretty sure most of us had similiar experiences and I'm flabbergasted that we come out of them relatively unscathed and not gibbering wrecks. Any stories?