On Watching Soccer

I have been watching soccer for 14 years and I still don't understand the game. I have friends, female friends, that understand all types of sports, including football which appears to my uneducated and bored being, to be perhaps the most ridiculous game in the entire free and not-so-free world.

I began watching soccer when my now-22 year old was 4. I am still watching soccer for my now-14 year old as he plays on the Freshman soccer team here at Redmond. I think he's good. I mean he doesn't let the ball go between his legs and he seems to kick it a lot and he runs around a lot and drinks Gatorade on the sidelines and when he's sitting on the bench he seems to be jostling around with the other boys; I think this are all good parameters.

I know mothers who are walking quickly up and down the sidelines and grimacing when a "bad call" is made. I know mothers who yell at the referees (not umpires; umpires are for other sports of which I cannot name) for calling their kid "offsides" when he wasn't. What is offsides? I asked my husband that once and he explained that it's when a player is on the wrong side of the field. How do they know what is the wrong side of the field? My husband got off of his camp chair and joined the mother who was walking quickly and grimacing. There are times when I think he wishes he was married to someone who at least pretended to be interested in sports.

When we lived in Granby we always had what I called a "Non-Super-Bowl-Party." The people who were really interested in the game watched it downstairs. The rest of us stayed upstairs and ate too much and made fun of the people downstairs. Occasionally there were women down there, but I think that's because another woman happened to be in the bathroom upstairs and they could no longer hold it. Our Non-Super-Bowl-Party was very popular and friends began asking about it right after Thanksgiving.

I try not to gather women around me who like sports. First of all I think they are just pretending to like sports so that their husband/boyfriend will like them more and secondly, women who like sports do not have the same wit as women who do not. This is true. Women who like sports cannot make fun of men and sports because they understand the game and do not think it's  funny when the rest of us laugh hysterically at terms such as "tight-end" or "dead ball."

Nevertheless, I have probably only missed 5% of all my boys' games in 28 years of marriage, so in that respect I'm a pretty good mom. However, you would think that in 28 years of marriage I might have learned something about sports.Many years ago, in a moment of weakness, I told my husband that when he retires I will learn to play golf. Today he retires; this is not good news for me, my husband and geese. The last time I played golf I killed a small goose. My friend Sam and I were in Sunriver, Oregon, which is very, very fancy (I'm surprised they didn't take a DNA reading when we drove in). We were teeing off on the first hole (doesn't it sound like I know what I'm talking about?) and I hit the ball and it hit a baby goose who was just getting into the pond. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so instead Sam and I ran out onto the course (apparently a big no-no) to rescue the baby goose and were attacked by the mother goose and hightailed it back and headed to the bar to drink. This is a true story. I have not played golf since and when I told my husband that I would learn to play golf when he retired I probably had also been in a bar.

I don't think I need to worry. I'm pretty sure my husband won't ever remind me of this promise. I think he'll be happy if I just stay in the bar.