800 lb. Gorilla

I promised it would be an awful week--one worth running away from...and it didn't disappoint. Seriously, I could write a book about this week. For the record, this blog contains fictionalized accounts of events interspersed with reality and my filtered insight mixed with hyperbole to help make a point. Now that I've made that clear, I would like to further state that my blog should never be referred to as "Exhibit A" in a court case...

There are about four different groups of people thinking that I am referring to them, or thinking that they know what I am referring to--in the words of the ape-faced Carly Simon "I bet you think this Entry's about you, Don't you? Don't you?"

Now, I'm going to ignore the 800 lb. gorilla which this week represents and move on to something that happened today....

Ryan has been playing soccer again this year, and he has really developed into a fun player to watch. It's a little frustrating that his best friend is the star of the team, and I end up sitting next to his parents at every game while their kid manages to weasel goals every game. Last week, Ryan's team was down 1-0 and Ryan came on fire, scoring two goals to bring the score to 2-1. He disrupted the other team's efforts, assisted on goals with beautiful passes, and played very aggressively. Somehow, his friend still managed to score three goals in the final quarter, surpassing Ryan on his best game ever and taking the wind out of his sails and a little bit of swagger out of his celebration (it didn't necessarily have to be that way, but this kid is that way...).

I took Ryan to the park today to practice, and started teaching him some techniques--then it flashed back to me. I remembered my dad teaching me the same exact technique thirty years ago.

I must have been in second grade, and I decided that I wanted to play soccer because the kids at recess played soccer every day. We had rusty poles in the schoolyard and the field was filled with weeds that were barely mowed. Half of the soccer field was so filled with tall weeds that it was too scary to play on--we just played some sort of half-court soccer of our own devising. It was during one of those games that I somehow caught the ball in the air.

Now, I think our group didn't know too many of the rules in soccer, but everyone knew that you couldn't grab the ball with your hands, so they all pointed at me and shouted "Hands!" I was mortified and ashamed for breaking a cardinal rule. So naturally I immediately wanted to join a team...okay, I don't know how that works, but I did.

Here I was, a proud member of the Devils. I still have a team picture somewhere...And I didn't know anything about soccer. Neither did my dad--I'm not sure how he managed not to know, but whatever--he still let me join.

We also got the crappiest, non-regulation excuse for a soccer ball available at the local K-mart for $3.99. It was a continuous, rubber ball and just had the black and white parts painted on--it was kind of embarrassing to take my ghetto-ball to practice. And I had very crummy, stiff cleats which I loved so much that I would wear them everywhere. I had to walk to practice, so they would wear down on the sidewalk. I would wear them to school if I could get away with it, and I ended up scraping the cleat part down to a smooth surface until I would just slide around on the grass, worse than if I was just wearing regular tennis shoes.

My dad is an engineer, and a really nice thing about engineers is that they think that they can just read the User's Guide and figure anything out, so off goes my dad to the library to check out books on playing soccer. Here were the steps to kicking the ball, laid out like the steps to the cha-cha. My dad studied them as though he was taking the bar exam.

We went to the schoolyard, which was across the street from our house. The idea was that we were going to kick the ball against the wall, wait for it to bounce back, and then continue kicking it so I could practice controlling the ball. My dad was ready to try out his new "Kick the ball like Pele'" technique, and he really dragged it out forever like he does lots of things. We must have stood staring at the pages of the book for half an hour while the ball sat on the weedy schoolyard. It was like Christmas morning--I was so excited to learn how to play soccer.

It was then that my ever-pessimistic Dad turned to me and said "I'm not sure exactly what is going to happen here. This ball could go sailing on top of the roof for all I know, and then we won't have a ball to play with anymore!" I remember being very worried about that prospect, and scared that I would lose my ball. It also had a seductive pull, kind of macho and destructive, like blowing up a model plane with fireworks or putting pennies on a train track. I had to watch.

As suspected, a person that had to check out a library book on how to kick a soccer ball didn't exactly have the capacity to drill the ball over a thirty foot wall, but he did pretty well. And I learned the technique and practiced and practiced against that wall, which was composed of small, loose stones embedded in concrete. It was possible, with the right angle and the right amount of force, to slam the ball hard against the wall and dislodge stones--another destructive macho thing which I geniunely loved to do.

In fact, one day about a year later I did send the ball sailing over that thirty foot wall (our school janitor, Mr. Brumble, retrieved it for me the next week--Incidentally, he was the source of my first cigarette when I was in kindergarten). And I ended up having the most powerful kick on every team I played for until I was in middle school. I never scored a goal in my years of playing, because I was parked in the backfield defending the goal and advancing the ball up the field (In frustration at never making a goal, I did make a great shot from midfield one time that the goalie barely saved)--I was a fantastic defender and our team ended up in first place several years.

More importantly, learning how to kick a soccer ball is a happy memory of my Dad that I can call up in my mind any time I like. This was a time when things felt normal, before the storm began--for some reason which I can not figure out, over the next couple of years our home seemed to deteriorate into an unhappy and unsafe place to live, and all of us kids have had to deal with those memories in different ways. A very frustrating thing these days is my parents' stance that they were the most wonderful parents in the world. They weren't. Sometimes, just to counterbalance this absurdity, I feel like I'm making them out to be the worst people in the world. They weren't that, either. But they did some pretty heartbreaking things which I took (and still take) pretty personally.

But a new chapter of my life started when I started looking at things a little more objectively and stopped taking those things so personally, and started doing my best to move on from those painful times. Reading over my own entry here, it is poignant to me that this happy memory is still ringed with a little cruelty and fear, but I can call it a happy memory if I want to.

Today at the park, I taught Ryan the "secret soccer kick" that my dad taught me from that book thirty years ago. He was grinning from ear to ear as I dove around trying to stop his rocket-powered goals. He was excited, just like I was, and it nearly brought tears to my eyes to realize how much I love him. I could put myself in a seven-year old body and feel the lonely despair I had begun to feel at that age--I hope Ryan feels joy and happiness without that twinge of fear that colors most of my childhood memories.

I picked up the phone to tell my Dad about teaching Ryan "the kick" I'm sure he would remember teaching me--I think we could count the times he checked books out of the library on one hand, and this was one of them. I wanted to tell him that I had recalled a happy memory--maybe it would make him feel good about those old times. Maybe he could cling to that. Maybe it is something to build on.