I am way cooler inside my head than in real life. I can always think of the funniest or smartest comments with imaginary conversations. Put a live human in front of me and suddenly I might as well be stuffed and hung on a wall! Even in this weakness of mine, every now-and-again, I surprise myself. Today, I think I made a friend.
My stomach has been on quite the roller coaster ride this week with highs of excitement and lows of twisting anxiety. I found out with only one week notice that Saturday (today) would be a soccer round-up for the summer woman's league. It has been several years and two kids since I last played competitively. My last attempt was pretty much pathetic...to say the least. My brain and instincts were still on par, but my body was definitely not. Remembering the tragedy of my last attempt, I started more conservatively today, not running around like a wild woman the first 30 seconds and then almost passing out. I hung back and made intermittent strategic runs. I passed more than I dribbled so as not to trip over the ball. After a bit, my confidence rose and I did some tricky stuff...successfully! Ok, maybe here's a good place to mention that the teams were horribly lopsided and the other side had mostly players that resembled cones more than soccer players. We pretty much wasted them, though no score was kept. (To give you a better idea of the situation, let's just say I was tempted to volunteer to be goalie for our time after a while...not a good sign for the skill level of our opponents). I'm not sure they really had any shots on goal. But, it definitely boosted my confidence and now I'm pretty much just excited about the whole idea of playing soccer again.
Back to my friend. We're pretty much identical in every way. She played soccer, I played soccer. We both want to play again after a serious hiatus. Her parents are from Argentina, I'm...well...I speak Spanish...and that's really about all I know about her. But I'm sure we'll discover many more things we have in common as we get to know each other! We decided to request to be on the same team so our paperwork got paper-clipped together. Definitely a new BFF. Too bad I thought of all the cool stuff to say in my head on the way home from the round-up. Luckily she had the sense enough to see through the dummy that runs my body most of the time and recognized my inner coolness. I'm looking forward to being her teammate.
3 comments:
I liked you had to learn your lesson not to run around like a crazy lady for 30 seconds and then die off. It reminded me of when I played church basketball the first time in years and tried to play the only way I know how: chase the ball handler, steal the ball, sprint down the court for a fast-break lay-up, then sprint back to do it all over again. Of course I had a well kept secret that I couldn’t play any other way since my shooting skills were, well, less than desirable! I learned the next game to take it easy and pass it off, though I was considerably less effective!!!
Reminds me of the time I tried to run a 5K without having trained. Not fun. I finally learned my lesson when I was about 50 years old. I play hard for a few minutes then voluteer to come off the court or field so someone else can have a chance. Gives me time to go throw up and catch my breath :)
Ditto the comment I left on Lee's blog. (it applies to you, too).
Post a Comment