Friday column: Great moments in fatherhood

So.

You’re a parent of a teenager trying out for a team in the Greater Toronto Hockey League.

Your son doesn’t make the roster — alas. Do you:

A) Tell your son to practice harder and try again next year?

B) Stoke his determination with stories about great stars who were cut early in their careers.

C) Sue the bastards.

If you’re like two fathers whose respective pride and joy didn’t measure up during tryouts for the Avalanche Minor Sports Club midget junior A team, the amazingly-silly-but-hardly-surprising-in-this-day-and-age answer is … C.

I’d name the patresfamilias, but if you’re a dad who is egocentric enough to sue over your son getting cut from a youth team, you’re egocentric enough to enjoy the notoriety.

Let’s just call them Lame Dad 1 and Lame Dad 2. Both lame dads cited damage to the fragile morale of their precious boys as the reason for burdening the Canadian court system with such piffle.

“Their direct actions have caused irreparable psychological damage to (the boy’s) self-esteem as an impressionable teenager and demoralized (him) as an athlete and team hockey player with his peers,” Lame Dad 1’s statement of claim reads: “The conduct by all defendants destroyed the dignity of my son, whom in good conscience gave his team nothing but his best efforts.”

The statement of claim from Lame Dad 2 states: “When (our son) was advised of his termination by my wife and I, he vowed never to play the game he loved since childhood. And, moreover, this misguided group of defendants demoralized my wife and I, whom had gone well beyond the call of duty as parents in support of the Toronto Avalanche hockey team for two seasons.”

Deep breath, everyone. All together now — and don’t forget the descending tone — one, two, three … awwwwwwww!

Yes, nothing like a dad preparing his progeny for the vicissitudes of life by encouraging the idea that when anything bad happens to you, it’s definitely someone else’s fault. So go in the corner and sulk.

Then sue.

Unfortunately, for Lame Dad 2, his son managed to get a gig with another team, which necessitated the following additional sentence in the statement of claim:

“Thank the good Lord that my son had the courage and strength to compose himself in his demoralized state.”

Yes, thank the good Lord, indeed, though the boy’s ability to summon such courage and strength does undercut Lame Dad 2’s claim of his son’s disheartenment. But then, maybe he should just come clean and sue in his own name, as he’s the one who seems demoralized.

My son can’t even make the team — what does that say about me?

Actually, that says nothing about you. Your going to court over this — I’m talking to both you lame dads — says a lot about you.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.