🎽 My daughter's first sports day got to me

My daughter had her first school sports day last week and I got there 30 minutes early. My mother was staying with us from Hyderabad, so she came along, holding an umbrella for the sun. All the parents stood along the rope near the field, phones up, like we were at a concert. My daughter was in the 3rd row of kids, looking at her shoes and then at me. Her race was 50 metres. It took less than 15 seconds. I think I held my breath for all of it. She came in somewhere in the middle. She didn't win, and she didn't cry. She ran to us with her arms out, shouting that she'd passed a girl in the last bit. I hadn't noticed that. I'd been watching her face so closely I missed the race. My mother said I was exactly the same at that age. I used to come last and still ask for ice cream. I don't remember that at all. But I remember my father clapping very loudly for no reason. Another father next to me was wiping his eyes and pretending it was the dust. We both laughed and neither of us said anything about it afterwards. On the way home she asked if she could run again next year, and then asked about lunch. I'd been worried about how she would feel after not winning. She'd already forgotten about it. I'm the one who kept thinking about it all night. I told my wife the whole thing twice. Is it normal for a parent to be more nervous than the kid? Anyone else had that?

My niece had her first sports day this year and I was the one who needed tissues. Her race was a mess. She stopped to wave at her mother halfway and still got a ribbon. I think those ribbons matter more to the grown ups than the kids. She wore hers to bed. Let her run again next year, and don't film the whole thing like I did, it shakes.

Watched my own daughter run her relay leg last month at her school sports day and somehow got far more nervous just standing there on the sidelines than I ever remember feeling during my own school sports events decades ago, which absolutely nobody had warned me about beforehand going into that particular Saturday morning at all this year, oddly enough.