you call it corn, we call it maize.

outdoor soccer season started three weeks before easter, but for each of those three weeks it rained so much that the games were cancelled. then, no games on easter and then it was last week & we had a bye. now, it's this week and 5 weeks after we were supposed to start the season we have our first game. it's a beautiful day with no forecast of rain and a predicted high of 70º. perfect. i checked the schedule and the game should be relatively easy. perfect x2. not that i am not generally up for a challenge but it takes some orientating to get ones bearings out there after playing indoor all winter and i'd just as soon there weren't a bunch of supahstars bearing down on me while i am trying to get my shit together. if you know what i mean.

i've played soccer for a lot of years - took it up when i was about 10 years old. it was the new sport in town and although the details are somewhat fuzzy, i remember playing on a rather wack co-ed team with my bff jennifer and some older guys who would take off their shirts during practice. this was my first glimpse of bare-chested, sweaty young men breathing hard, and all i knew at the time was that i wanted to go to practice every day. we did have a coach and played games in a league so it's not like it was some random scheme launched by high-schoolers to pick up elementary school girls. it was just that sort of odd mix you can get when you're launching something new at the ymca.

my bff was unexpectedly good at soccer. well, unexpected for me at least. and she might not even have been all that good objectivelywise, but she was better at soccering than i, and it was the first time i noticed i might have to try a bit harder at this sports thing than maybe other people did. apparently i am a bit discoördinated. who knew? it was also the first time i noticed that my bff jennifer was a blonde haired, blue eyed beauty and that i was a rather dull four-eyed brunette. nothing like a bare-chested 16 year old talking to your bff while you stand there like a doof to bring this realization slamming on home.

ANYWAYS.

i played in junior high school and became a fairly solid outside fullback. there is enough diversity of position on the soccer field for everyone to find a place - sort of a disney moment for us all. my jr high coach wanted to move me to halfback but with all the running there, i had serious trouble breathing and am only now able to put it all together and see that i've had asthma probably all my life. we'll just skip the part here where no one was paying enough attention to my health to help me put this together at the time. [poor pitiful me!]

so i took it up when i was about 10 and played thru junior high but my high school didn't have soccer for girls until i was a senior, when i played again, but apparently all those years not playing hadn't helped my mad soccer skillz. what's odd is that i don't so much remember not being good at it, but i do clearly remember being told by my teammates that the coach only put me into games because she felt sorry for me and wanted me to be eligible for a varsity letter. by then i was well on my way to being valedictorian so i knew in my head that it's okay to be not-so-good at sports, but somehow failed to realize that these teammates were olympic-quality wankettes.

flash forward to me sitting at my kitchen table as a grown-up having one of those "this is not my house" moments, perusing the newspaper for an escape hatch when lo & behold, what to my wondering eyes should appear - soccer for grown-ups. count me in! and i've been playing ever since.

the end.