2003-05-14 - 2:57 p.m. Awakening 2 Dirt 11/15/96 My face is wet and cold. My head is ringing. I feel the cold damp mud all around my face, and the water from the cold, cold grass. I can see my breath. I feel a body on top of me and I can see a bright yellow and black bumblebee shirt in front of me. My tight skimpy shorts are riding up my ass. I realize where I am. I am on the soccer field and I have collided with some one. Maybe two people. I went up for a head ball, and �.. the goalie came out for it. He missed it!!! I push someone off me and leap to my feet. I see the bumblebee goalie at my feet and the defender behind me. They are getting up, slowly. I quickly realize that the ball isn�t here. In fact, its in front of the goal, with no goalie. I dash over to the ball with a feeling of nervousness, similar to the first time that I handled a child. I know all I have to do is kick a straight ball in between two posts. But for me, this is new. I have never scored a goal before. This is a virgin shot. It�s my senior year of school, and after playing soccer for four years as a defenseman, the coach has decided to try me out at striker. I have never shot the ball at the net, let alone scored before. I have only been playing for thirty seconds in tonight�s game. I wind up, and �pass� the ball into the back of the mesh. I always thought that a goal would cause me to go nuts and rip my shirt off and do flips, but I don�t. I just jog back to the line and smile. I look over at the coach, and he�s taking me out. But I scored?!? He would later bench me for two games. This is unexplained. At the game that night, I think he is going to let me back in though. I sit there and stare at the game. My best friends are announcing the game. Knowing the absurdity that I scored and �trash-time� nature of this goal they went nuts over the PA. I was pleased with Needles and Kerbang�s wild emotions. I was sad that my parents missed that game. They normally came, but missed this one. My mother cried when I told her. She thought she was a bad mother. I told her a bad mother would have beat me because the bad mother would be upset that I had scored when she wasn�t there. She did not like that comment. The coach, a professional beer taster for Anheiser Busch, told the team after the game in his slow surly slurred voice, �Listen Folks, we struggle, and we try, but we tried winning. Your players of soccer. We player to win. Listen even Gump scored out there. Anyone can score!� Cocksucker. He couldn�t ruin my mood though. I still know that its better to be lucky than good. Also that even the worst player has there moment of glory. Everyone has those little moments that move in slow motion, where you feel like you are different; like you are above humanity. For all the pain, and the adversity that soccer put me through, that moment is what I remember. Why do you think that is? | |||||||||||
