Last night I started reminiscing about, of all things, shoes I use to have and love dearly. (I gave away 20 pairs of shoes before I moved to Texas. I was paying PER BOX and I already had 16 boxes filled with clothes, other shoes and memorabilia. More boxes just for shoes just didn't make sense financially to me, since I'd just spent my life savings on Jerry's wedding band. Dude, it's air craft grade Titanium, it cost a lot.) One pair in particular stood out above all the others and it caused an avalanche of other thoughts. Then some digging around in old pictures. Then some amazement. Then some speculation.
These shoes were Adidas (which stands for All Day I Dream About Soccer, not SEX Kristopher!). I was partial to Adidas, as I was a soccer player. I was a soccer player for 16 years. I also played volleyball, basketball and badminton. In essence, I was a jock. But I always identified myself as a soccer player, as I played that year round, while the others were just a few short months and filled up after school time. I was good at soccer, really good. Provincial-level-offered-scholarships good.
I started thinking of the teams I'd played on, the team mates I had, that I didn't know the "technical" terms (forward, half back, defense, striker, goalie, sweeper, ect) - just how to play for most of my soccer "career", how I was always terrified of "heading the ball" but let my poor chest take a beating, how my right knee still "clicks" when I go down stairs because that punk at the Taber tournament kicked out it out from behind so I wouldn't score - then I got a penalty kick and scored the only point in the game ... with my lame knee (I had a mean top right corner kick)...
Which in turn had me wondering if I had any picture of me playing soccer. I played soccer for almost 16 years. SIXTEEN Years. Do you know how many picture I have of me playing soccer? None. Zero. Zippo. Zilch.
Why? I guess the same reason I don't have any of me playing any other sport ... my parents didn't come watch me play. Not more than a couple times. Then again, they didn't go to watch my brother play his sports on a regular basis either. So I really can't be crying too loud they neglected the whole "supportive sports parent" roll, since it was an all round thing and not selective. It does make me wonder what the heck else they were doing, though.
Mom?
Dad?
Why didn't you love me?
Haha. Kidding!
I guess because I am raising my kids in a "soccer mom" enviroment where sports are HIGH on peoples agenda and getting kids to games entails more than making sure they know what day it's on - because they can't just walk there on their own; my parents lack of involvement and possible disinterest in our sports "careers" is odd to me. I am, in no way, critisizing the way the raised us. We all turned out to be mostly normal, fairly high functioning, rather emotionally stable adults. So they must have been doing stuff right.
Or we were just lucky to walk away relatively unscathed.
*winks*
2 comments:
I'm sorry but I remember standing on the sidelines in the wind and cold alot of the times with the Neufelds and Humphreys watching you all play and I remember the inside soccor where I thought the field was WAY too small to play on. Why no pictures, I probably didn't have a camera that worked at the time. Your dad, I don't know, maybe basketball AND I was also at most of Michael games, soccor, hockey and BB. Who do ya think did the driving?
eeeer .... I thought I caught rides with the other players?
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