Matching Tracksuits

While the Boy practices soccer, I either go for a walk or a run, depending primarily on how my knees feel. I’d discovered a nature path near the soccer fields long ago, and that path led to a sewer easement that in turn looked like another nature path. It wound through a forest and by a little creek.

When we came back from Poland and headed over there for the first practice of the fall season, I saw that developers had cleared the land and begun grading it for a new housing or apartment development.

Since then, the work has progressed, with the addition of a retention pond and several retaining walls.

I walked through the area today reflecting on the changes that have come and the further changes coming. What was only months ago a forest is now flat, barren ground; in a few months’ time, it will become someone’s home. They will likely not know about the transformation; they will like never have gone for a jog in the forest that became their backyard.

I find myself sometimes a little obsessed with these little tricks of time and knowledge, and I often wonder about the history of any given thing — a viral video, a house in the middle of nowhere, a car left on the side of the road with a DUI tag — and what led that car, that video, that house to be there at that moment. What led up to that? What were the events that followed one after another until the officer pulls over a weaving driver?

It’s been a tough season: our team has one win and who knows how many losses. Each Saturday, we head out, and I tell the Boy to do his best, to enjoy the game, to keep his chin up no matter the outcome, to tell him that they can indeed win because they have done it before — and I convince myself of it. And then three, five, seven minutes into the game, the other team scores its first goal, and I immediately turn pessimistic.

Today was no different. Within the first half of the first half, we were down 0-3. We stopped the hemorrhaging and even scored a goal to enter the half-time break down 1-3.

Then I hear from the couple sitting beside me, “Oh no. No. Dear God, no.” I look up and see that their son is putting on the goalie jersey. This is their son’s first year playing, and like many kids, he’s not particularly athletic. But he wants to play, and he does the best he can. His parents cheer him on continually, and the other boys on the team are supportive as well. “I love my son,” the other said, “but he doesn’t throw himself in front of anything.” Yet the boys hold it together fairly well, letting two more goals in while scoring two more themselves to end 3-5.

After our third goal, one of the parents from the other team became irate. “Call the illegal throw!” he screamed. I didn’t see that our boys had done anything illegal, but he apparently thought they had. I glanced over to see a fairly muscular tattooed man with bulging veins in his neck as he yelled “Call the illegal throw!” again.

What a jerk, I thought. What a way to set an excellent example: yell at the ref who is himself a high-school-aged kid. How embarrassing.

Eventually, he calmed down, but he continued making remarks about the ref and how our boys weren’t following the rules.

I wanted to walk over to him and say, “Look, man, it’s a game. They’re kids; the ref is a kid; your kid’s team is up by 2 — calm yourself and stop making an ass of yourself.” Of course, that would have made me just as bad as he in many ways, and nothing good could come of a confrontation like that.

It turns out, though, that this was the opponents’ first win of the season. That makes us tied as far as records go…