Narrative Draft #1
CLOUD
It is the year 1990; I sit here now in my stale living room a content 70 year old man, watching the Italian world cup loudly roaring on my poor excuse for a television. My grandchildren watch the game with their wide eyed expressions glued to the screen like zombies as Team Germany just scores a goal. The late afternoon sun gleaming into my window, I doze off into the twilight of my early childhood memories. I can’t help but recall the days when I was about 10 years old and playing soccer.
I came from Brazil to the United States, where at that time soccer wasn’t as popular and commercialized as it is today. Back in Brazil we used to play under a scorching unmerciful sun without any protection on our bare feet. Our filed consisted of nothing but dry dirt; it was solid and filled with irritating hot pebbles. After playing a game our feet would ache as if we had just walked a mile on hot coals. But who cared? We didn’t, our love for the sport was so deep the sacrifice was worth while. Not to mention kicking the ball without proper cleats or shin guards, as they wear today in organized soccer, only made us tougher. When my mother used to call us in for dinner, I would plaster soiled mud onto my legs to hide my wounds and many bruises in order to play another day. My mother would worry about me getting hurt on the field nagging to me constantly, “soccer is a very physical and contact sport, son.” To make things worse we never used an official referee, so injuries were common, and I got used to wearing mud. Before every game all the boys marked the touch lines, goal lines, goal areas, penalty marks, penalty arcs, halfway line, center mark, and center circle (which had been more like an oval for us) with nubby chalk, trying to mimic the adults’ field. For us, marking the field was a ritual, there were 22 of us drawing, and among some of us were little juvenile line drawing competitions, for example, which could draw the fastest and most accurate lines with our chalk. Any near by rock was transformed into our corner flags. The stray dog, who we named Mule, for some reason would always sit directly in the center mark of the field, expecting food of course, delaying the kick off to start. Despite its rundown condition, this field was our Mecca, our second home, and we worshiped this pitiful old field of dirt.
The 11 guys on my team were all my closest buddies; on our beat-up holey shirts each of us had our nick-names written in lipstick, which we lovingly “borrowed” from our older sisters. They acted as make-shift jerseys with numbers way too small for anyone to notice anyway. My nick name was Cloud, and of course my number was 1. I got this name from my speed; I was so fast the only thing my opponents could see was a cloud of dust when had the ball. For this reason I was the striker because I my quickness aloud me to score many goals. Our goalie, Wally, from the word wall, as in brick wall, was so big nothing could get by him into the goal area. He was the only Jewish kid in our neighborhood too. One summer he dropped his chocolate through the tangled goal net and dove for it like a drowning baby. Of course he got stuck, but we were all amused watching him struggle to free himself as he flailed like a fish out of water. I’ve never laughed so hard in my entire life. He sure LOVED his chocolate. Actually, we found out that his love for chocolate was beneficial for us. Wally was Jewish, so during the holidays he would receive pounds of Hanukkah gelt. We were fascinated by these chocolate coins covered with gold aluminum wrapping, so we threatened Wally not to eat them because we needed them for our coin tosses at the beginning of the game. This takes us to our smallest player, Pee-wee, one of the forwards, who usually played alongside with me. He got his name obviously from his petite size. He was half as big as everyone else, but just as fast and strong. We played offense well together; he would always assist my goal scoring. Pee-wee also had incredible footwork, he would dribble the soccer ball so well that the person defending him would usually end up stumbling on there own clumsy feet like a new born foal standing up for the first time. The other forward was Pookie, the “ladies man.” He got his name from all the girls’ playful teases about his good looks. Pookie was an exceptional player, but he was distracted by the girls always watching him play. Our midfielders were Rafa short for Rafael, Mafa because it rhymed with Rafa, and Frankie. They were triplets who I believe shared one brain between the three of them; either that or they used telepathy. They could always anticipate and read one another’s passes and cross the ball over to the middle of the field with incredible accuracy. Mafa was a great mathematician so he would study the passing angles before every game, he said it was closely related to physics, but we were all too anxious to ever listen to his silly theories. We all thought he was wasting his time, but it seemed to work in games, so we never made fun of him. Three of the guys on our defense were named the trunks, like tree trunks, because they were all best friends and were the tallest out of the whole group. Anyway, Paulo and Zach were our left and right full backs, and Big was our stopper. He was called Big, because he stood 6 feet tall at age 13, which was odd for soccer and odd for that age. He was a ticking time bomb, everyone kept their distance, but this was good for a defensive position.
Lastly there was Bobbie. She had golden-brown hair with bright green eyes and a glowing bronzed complexion. To everyone else she was the annoying tomboy, always begging us to let her play, but it was me who convinced my team to make her sweeper because that position had the least action, plus she was better than half of the boys so I didn’t want her to show them up and get injured in the process. Nobody knew that Bobbie was my secret crush. After games we would practice are footwork skills and head the ball back and forth. I considered Bobbie and I a team back then, as I still do today.
Check out this short Soccer Film
A Soccer Story (click Watch)
It is the year 1990; I sit here now in my stale living room a content 70 year old man, watching the Italian world cup loudly roaring on my poor excuse for a television. My grandchildren watch the game with their wide eyed expressions glued to the screen like zombies as Team Germany just scores a goal. The late afternoon sun gleaming into my window, I doze off into the twilight of my early childhood memories. I can’t help but recall the days when I was about 10 years old and playing soccer.
I came from Brazil to the United States, where at that time soccer wasn’t as popular and commercialized as it is today. Back in Brazil we used to play under a scorching unmerciful sun without any protection on our bare feet. Our filed consisted of nothing but dry dirt; it was solid and filled with irritating hot pebbles. After playing a game our feet would ache as if we had just walked a mile on hot coals. But who cared? We didn’t, our love for the sport was so deep the sacrifice was worth while. Not to mention kicking the ball without proper cleats or shin guards, as they wear today in organized soccer, only made us tougher. When my mother used to call us in for dinner, I would plaster soiled mud onto my legs to hide my wounds and many bruises in order to play another day. My mother would worry about me getting hurt on the field nagging to me constantly, “soccer is a very physical and contact sport, son.” To make things worse we never used an official referee, so injuries were common, and I got used to wearing mud. Before every game all the boys marked the touch lines, goal lines, goal areas, penalty marks, penalty arcs, halfway line, center mark, and center circle (which had been more like an oval for us) with nubby chalk, trying to mimic the adults’ field. For us, marking the field was a ritual, there were 22 of us drawing, and among some of us were little juvenile line drawing competitions, for example, which could draw the fastest and most accurate lines with our chalk. Any near by rock was transformed into our corner flags. The stray dog, who we named Mule, for some reason would always sit directly in the center mark of the field, expecting food of course, delaying the kick off to start. Despite its rundown condition, this field was our Mecca, our second home, and we worshiped this pitiful old field of dirt.
The 11 guys on my team were all my closest buddies; on our beat-up holey shirts each of us had our nick-names written in lipstick, which we lovingly “borrowed” from our older sisters. They acted as make-shift jerseys with numbers way too small for anyone to notice anyway. My nick name was Cloud, and of course my number was 1. I got this name from my speed; I was so fast the only thing my opponents could see was a cloud of dust when had the ball. For this reason I was the striker because I my quickness aloud me to score many goals. Our goalie, Wally, from the word wall, as in brick wall, was so big nothing could get by him into the goal area. He was the only Jewish kid in our neighborhood too. One summer he dropped his chocolate through the tangled goal net and dove for it like a drowning baby. Of course he got stuck, but we were all amused watching him struggle to free himself as he flailed like a fish out of water. I’ve never laughed so hard in my entire life. He sure LOVED his chocolate. Actually, we found out that his love for chocolate was beneficial for us. Wally was Jewish, so during the holidays he would receive pounds of Hanukkah gelt. We were fascinated by these chocolate coins covered with gold aluminum wrapping, so we threatened Wally not to eat them because we needed them for our coin tosses at the beginning of the game. This takes us to our smallest player, Pee-wee, one of the forwards, who usually played alongside with me. He got his name obviously from his petite size. He was half as big as everyone else, but just as fast and strong. We played offense well together; he would always assist my goal scoring. Pee-wee also had incredible footwork, he would dribble the soccer ball so well that the person defending him would usually end up stumbling on there own clumsy feet like a new born foal standing up for the first time. The other forward was Pookie, the “ladies man.” He got his name from all the girls’ playful teases about his good looks. Pookie was an exceptional player, but he was distracted by the girls always watching him play. Our midfielders were Rafa short for Rafael, Mafa because it rhymed with Rafa, and Frankie. They were triplets who I believe shared one brain between the three of them; either that or they used telepathy. They could always anticipate and read one another’s passes and cross the ball over to the middle of the field with incredible accuracy. Mafa was a great mathematician so he would study the passing angles before every game, he said it was closely related to physics, but we were all too anxious to ever listen to his silly theories. We all thought he was wasting his time, but it seemed to work in games, so we never made fun of him. Three of the guys on our defense were named the trunks, like tree trunks, because they were all best friends and were the tallest out of the whole group. Anyway, Paulo and Zach were our left and right full backs, and Big was our stopper. He was called Big, because he stood 6 feet tall at age 13, which was odd for soccer and odd for that age. He was a ticking time bomb, everyone kept their distance, but this was good for a defensive position.
Lastly there was Bobbie. She had golden-brown hair with bright green eyes and a glowing bronzed complexion. To everyone else she was the annoying tomboy, always begging us to let her play, but it was me who convinced my team to make her sweeper because that position had the least action, plus she was better than half of the boys so I didn’t want her to show them up and get injured in the process. Nobody knew that Bobbie was my secret crush. After games we would practice are footwork skills and head the ball back and forth. I considered Bobbie and I a team back then, as I still do today.
Check out this short Soccer Film
A Soccer Story (click Watch)
posted by Lisa Thomas at 3:23 PM
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