We should have known something was up when, on Sunday, as Sarah and I left to wash comforters at a local laundromat (that fact alone tells you how our Memorial Day weekend went), we ran across somewhere between 6 and 10 minivans parked in a row in the parking lot that abuts our building.

Turns out there's a big soccer tournament in these parts. And people drive from all over (at least from parts of New York and Vermont, going off of licence plates) to play.

This actually turned around to bite us as we got lunch during the washing, as the local Friendly's was innundated with players, coaches, and parents, who swamped the apparently already understaffed restaurant. I'd originally hoped to dine at this establishment, but couldn't find it. Apparently, the one time I'd been to Needham wasn't enough for me to remember its location (and I didn't ask for directions not out of some wellspring of testosterone-induced machismo, but because I felt like an idiot).

There's an episode of King of the Hill where a bunch of kids switch over to soccer from football. It's an interesting episode, in that it points out two things that, perhaps not exclusive to youth soccer, seem to plague large children-based activities in general.

1. The "Everyone's A Winner!" mentality. One of the funnier things about the episode is seeing how the soccer coach rewards the team for doing very little. One would assume that, at the end of the year, every kid on the team would get some sort of trophy.

Should youth sports take on some sort of social Darwinist role to pigeon-hole seven year olds? No. But I've never quite figured out who we're fooling by making up awards for everyone. I know, we don't want to injure anyone's self-esteem, but I think kids see through this ruse more easily than adults realize.

If you're going to give out awards just to make some kids feel better, don't give out anything. Or just recognize participation and take everyone out for ice cream.

2. Soccer as social programming One of the subplots of the King of the Hill episode follows Peggy as she tries to fit in with the soccer moms and their sweater over the shoulder, latte sipping ways.

While eating, we were seated near a table with a soccer mom and her two kids. She spent about as much time on her phone as talking to her kids for the first 10 minutes they were there, which the kids didn't seem to think unusual. Then, as the wait staff was rushing around trying to get things under control, she says something along the lines of "they should have prepared knowing the tournament was going on."

Here's a thought: perhaps the world doesn't revolve around you and your ball-kicking spawn.

I know, I shouldn't take this one woman as an example of soccer mommery. I worked with a woman last year whose daughter played soccer, traveled to tournaments, the whole thing. Very nice people, not in any way like the woman I mentioned. I'm sure many of the soccer parents are decent folks.

But there's this odd undertone to youth soccer as one of the trappings of upper middle class standing. Get the kids in the SUV and drive them to the nice field, hurry! Sometime around 2016, someone's going to make a movie like The Ice Storm, but about a family that falls apart during some youth soccer tournament in 2005.

In most countries, soccer was the game of the people. In a typical US move, we've made it into another sport for the well to do.

I suppose my feelings about youth soccer stem in part from my own experience. I was part of my town's inaugural youth soccer program, in the wake of the NASL's prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It wasn't very complex; show up on Saturday mornings, learn some skills, and scrimmage. Parents? The only ones there were those who were instructing. Heck, not having my folks around was probably a win-win for both of us. I got to play a game that I liked, and they didn't have to watch a sport they didn't get.