The frozen spoils
A work colleague of mine mentioned last night that she’s going to watch her son’s soccer game today; a tidbit that seemed to arise mostly because she was fretting that she hadn’t yet found him a pair of socks to hold up his shin guards.
Ah, youth soccer… the memories come flooding back to me. I was eight years old when I attended my first organized soccer practice. It was an in-house league; all the games were played out behind Walter Miller Elementary School, and I was #7 on a team sponsored by Gus’ 7-Eleven. Gus was our coach, and his 7-Eleven franchise was located less than a quarter mile up the road (it’s since been made into a commercial duplex of sorts, split right up the middle, hosting both a news dealer and a check cashing joint). After games, he’d often treat the whole team to Slurpee’s.
Those were the days.
Wait, that’s right, I was talking about practice, wasn’t I? So there I was, standing amid a crowd of fifteen or so kids my age, waiting for the coach to round us up. I was watching the other kids playing with their soccer balls. I didn’t have my own, so I just observed these strangers cavorting, kicking and throwing, and out of the corner of my eye, one kid was punting a ball way up into the air.
That’s when I heard someone say, “Head’s up!”
The responsive young man that I was, I promptly looked up, at which point my head was immediately confronted with the same ball that I was semi-aware had been punted a couple seconds prior to its collision with my face.
Head’s up, indeed.
I’m not sure what hurt more, the physical pain or the embarrassment. But I stayed despite what some would interpret as a warning sign, and my perseverance was rewarded. Which reminds me of why I begged my parents to let me play soccer in the first place.
I should actually credit my sister, who first decided she wanted to play soccer. She was a couple years older than me, but I begged them to let me play, too. She harbored some initial resentment toward me for following her example. Her resentment of my copy-cat behavior was probably aggravated by the fact that my uniform for Gus’ 7-Eleven was the exact same color as her uniform: Kelly green. But she got over it eventually.
At one point she even tried to encouraged me, noting how horrible my balance was when we’d go rollerskating—she assured me that balance and coordination would improve as I became more athletic. She told me I’d become less awkward and clumsy. I could only hope so, as this pattern of getting smacked in the face with punted balls had to be halted somehow.
Thank God, my sister was right about becoming less clumsy and awkward. I learned very quickly that I liked this game, and my first season with Gus’ 7-Eleven was what I would consider an excellent season. Well, we won more than we lost. Besides, how could you count it anything less than a complete success when after each game we would march on over to Gus’ store to revel in the frozen spoils of hard-fought battle?
I played soccer for ten more years, right through high school, and I enjoyed every minute of it, from sweltering August afternoons spent running endlessly back and forth, to cold November championship matches where I wouldn’t have traded one shiver during the worst loss for all the leisurely warmth of a seat in front of the TV at home. The worst hell on a soccer field was superior to any creature comfort off of it.
Ah yes, those were the days.
It’s funny the things you recall so clearly: the crystalline reflection of things that rescued you from the troubles of less-than-perfect youth; the distractions that kept you from growing up way too soon; and even the way you didn’t appreciate the beauty of being young and insignificant.
It’s strange the memories dredged up by hearing about a mother’s quest for soccer socks.
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