Cute story.

So the other day I was sitting in a coffee shop, and suddenly this little boy and girl both about the age of 6 or 7 years old ran up to me. The little boy asked me, "What did you do to your arm?" and pointed at my cast. I told him that I broke my wrist and he asked me how I did it. I told him that I was playing a sport called rugby, and the mom began to look a little nervous that I told her children that. Then, it was the little girl who asked me first what rugby was. The mom immediately interrupted and said, "Ohhh honey it's a verrrrry rough sport, I don't think you would like it!" But I cut the mom off there and told the girl, "Yeah it seems rough, but it is in a nice way! It's kind of like soccer and football combined into one sport and it's really fun. I think you'd actually really like it, and I think you'd be really good at it!" The little girl looked at me like she was incredibly interested, even at the very young age she was. She said to me, "Oh well I play soccer and I like that sport, so I think I would like rugby too!" Then she turned to her mom with a huge smile on her face and said, "Mom can I play RUGBY?!" and then the little boy yelled, "ME TOO, ME TOO! I play football but I also want to play rugby, am I allowed to play too?!" and I told him that he was definitely allowed to play and that he would be good at it too, and both the boy and the girl got extremely excited! Then the mom laughed, said goodbye to me, and took her kids away, but I could still hear them outside saying, "I can't wait to play rugby!!!"

Those kids probably forgot about the whole thing by the time they got home, but it was still really fantastic to see a youth take such interest in rugby. It drives me crazy that not only does a huge part of the United States population misunderstand and not know a lot about rugby, but to a lot of the youth and even up until high school age rugby is almost non existent. It's sad that those two kids had no idea what rugby was but knew what both soccer and football were. Well maybe in the future when they hear someone talk about rugby again those kids will think, "Oh yeah I know what rugby is, it's the sport that the girl with the highlighter yellow cast told me about when I was younger!" hahaha. I hope that my children (biological or adopted) play rugby because of how much I have truly benefited from it. I hope that someday I can help to change the public's view on rugby and introduce it to children at a very young age. It's a nice thought.