05 May 2007
Soccer Ball
I'm whipped, but it is all self-inflicted and I am not going to whine about it. The show must go on, and amid the wreckage of a week on the road, the laundry and old dishes and dry house-plants, I have to make a series of go-no-go decision about the day. That is precisely the problem. I know I should be making some strategic decisions, but the pain associated with them is not today, so I will put them off until tomorrow.
The way I respond to life is not unique, and not unlike the soccer games that the kids played not so long ago. The local tots league out there in the County was intended to build the ability of the little kids to work as a team, and promote self-esteem, not competitive spirit. Accordingly, the names of the participating units did not feature fierce and warlike mascots.
Our little guys played on the The Snoopies, the most harmless of symbols, though in a passive-aggressive sense I'm sure we paid no royalties to Charles M. Shultz, his heirs or assigns.
The games were a lot of fun. You could see some of the Type A Moms and Dads wanting to take things to the next level, but some of the kids were content to stand out on the field and look at dandelions, while other, more developmentally focused, all swarmed around the ball.
Passing and tactics were not part of the equation, at that point, and a little knot of children simply swarmed around the ball, moving in a cluster up and down the grass with the officials and parents looking on.
We grow out of that. The cute little kids changed, with the passage of time, from soccer to more violent activities. For my guys it was Lacrosse, with pads and lightning passing and hard body shots. Any team that tried to attack the man with the ball was inviting the swift-sure pass, and the deadly on-goal shot. Strategy was everything, and enhanced skills and fierce force of will.
The litt'list Snoopy is now a towering young man with a business-like haircut, and he “walked” yesterday at his university in a state four jurisdictions away from where I pound on the keys. They don't “walk” anymore, really, in the sense that their names are called individually and a simulated diploma thrust into their hands by a harried Dean. That would take too long and our attention span is too short.
The graduates are identified by category, the highly honored and less so, rising in groups by turn. With the exception of the very highest performances, the graduates were recognized by the color of the soccer ball they had followed through their undergraduate years.
The ceremony was conducted in the basketball arena, under the Green and White banners that proclaimed the championships of yesteryear. I made it, though it was a weekday. A little agility was a small price to pay to mark a significant day in both of our lives.
Walking back to his house after the ceremony, I told him that the National Bank of Dad was planning on an orderly dissolution of its assets to accomplish other strategic tasks, and that he should plan accordingly. He smiled, still counting on the gravy train that has not left the station, and which comes with the graduation watch and the title to the truck he drives.
He does not know yet about living check-to-check, for real, or actually being the soccer ball with the cluster of chubby little legs since he has not yet known debt. I squirm a little that perhaps I have missed passing on a crucial lesson about the strategic nature of life, and the wary approach to it that makes unpleasant strategic choices necessary. But my folks did not require it, and I will not ask that up front from my sons. The Bank is well aware that nothing is over, until it is over.
That includes the transition to the great beyond, since by separate correspondence I have been made uncomfortably aware that even death only brings more consequences. Faulkner was talking about the South when he observed that “ The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past .”
Or maybe he wasn't. I don't know.
The grandparents were there, as we clustered around our soccer ball, one of the hundreds surrounded by their own doting teams. But in their presence I sensed the looming next crisis.
It is not over until it is over. Apparently, it is not over until it becomes someone else's problem, and someone else's ball.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com