Have you ever had bitchin’ plans for a long weekend only to see them torpedoed by something you do hours after you get off work? You know, like when you head to Vegas and shoot your whole wad the first night and wake up the next day hung over and unable to motivate yourself to go out again? Well that’s what happened this weekend to me….although I promise I’ve been nowhere close to Vegas.

See, this week is fall break for Cougar Country Unified and Rita traditionally sends the kids to see her parents in San Diego. The plan is that we rendezvous with her folks deep in the Sonoran Delta, where they usually spend the night before. We come in, drop off the children, and then wait until the next day to go home.

Throwing a big, giant monkey wrench into things was that Justin had his first flag football game Friday night. He was shall we say, excited about playing under the lights. (No I’m serious, he got excited that the game was played at night under artificial lights.) The way it works is that the city organizes the teams by the school they attend. (For the longest time we didn’t realize his team’s opponent was a Catholic school abbreviated to “OLPH”.) The school uniform crowd apparently didn’t respect Justin or his teammates much but they should have.

Instead of pounding on Justin and company, OLPH was stymied all game. No points. Justin meanwhile saw little action either, with the quarterback rolling out plenty of times but not hitting many of his guys. It got to be the fourth quarter, and then the game really started heating up. First, OLPH tossed a bomb at the end zone trying to break the tie. Justin meanwhile, had none of that and picked it off. His school, the Cardinals, began to march down the field until they tossed a big one for a touchdown. But wait, there was an illegal motion penalty negating the play. And it was Justin who was guilty.

D’oh.

OLPH managed to hurl another one into the end zone as the seconds ticked down. But it sailed out the back, with the player unable to grab it. That meant overtime.

At this point, the other kids were going home. The soccer leagues on other fields also were packing up their stuff. Rita and I had stopped sitting in our folding chairs long before the start of the over time. We asked the ref how it was supposed to work. It turns out it’s much like college, where the teams get a certain number of plays from a pre-determined started down near the end zone. The first over time yielded touchdowns on both sides but both failed on the extra point. (There is no kicking, just conversions.) In the second over time period, the down was moved up to essentially the two yard line….but both teams failed to score. The ref told us that starting with the third overtime, each team would get one play from the two yard line. However, out of nowhere, the recreation department supervisor came over (looking very much like a skinny version of your favorite’s sports commissioner with balding hair and thick glasses) and announced if the third over time ended in a tie that would be that.

And then came the real controversy.

OLPH called a run play and seemed to scamper into the end zone. But the referee called the flag down before the ball broke the plane of the goal line. Their coach became livid accusing the wrong official of making the call. The flag was obviously not in the end zone…but perhaps the ball might have come very close the breaking the plane as the play stretched his arms out. The coach continued to fight the call because the linesman continued to remain quiet.

That gave Justin and his boys one last chance. The quarterback decided to make a run for it off tackle and scored. No one could believe it….the marathon game was over and somehow sanity prevailed.

But you can imagine what happened next. The kids up past their bedtime were hard to wake up on Saturday. We got going late and kept Rita’s parents waiting. We turned on the UCLA game and ended up taking a nap. (Not a bad idea, apparently.) Woke up late Sunday, then again today.

Justin has a bye this week, and then picks it up again in two weeks.