I Realize I Have Learned Nothing

Note to self: do not eat a salmon burger before a night soccer game (and you'd think I'd have learned my lesson about heavy meals before athletic events in college, when I went to the Wendy's SuperBar before an intramural football game and stuffed my belly full of tacos and pudding, and then got burned play after play by a tall wide receiver who probably ate a banana or a granola bar or something  like that before the game, and waited until after the game to have a celebratory meal) but though our adult league game was a grueling battle-- I nearly puked-- we lucked out with a Diego Maradona "Hand of God" style goal in the waning minutes for the tie . . . and so we remain undefeated at 5-0-1.

Dave Labors to Complete Summer

So I'd like to assure everyone that the summer is complete-- diligent readers might be worried, but yes I saw Lecompt at the Springfield a couple of times . . . I just never got around to writing about the shows, and yes I wrestled in a pool with a bunch of men, some teenage boys and one brave young woman for a greased watermelon . . . this year's scrum was especially epic and went on far too long; the watermelon actually split into pieces in the first match, but the lifeguards had a back-up watermelon (also fully slicked with vaseline) so we were able to play a second game, and while I was fighting for my life, treading water, breathing heavily, occasionally shot-putting the melon, and mainly trying not to drown, I managed to salvage two proud moments: the first was when I made an accurate behind the back pass (with a greased watermelon) under heavy pressure from The Deatz and the second was when one of my soccer players got into space on the wing, called for the melon, and finished perfectly . . . and though when he tossed the melon over the lip of the pool, this was to defeat my team (Team 2!) I attribute his heads-up play, communication, and spacing to my unparalleled coaching . . . so though it was a loss, it was also a victory . . . but let me assure you, it wasn't all treading water and high-fives, I also had one shameful moment, when an opposing player surfaced with the melon, and I violently dunked this person, and then I realized it wasn't an adult, it was one of the youngsters . . . one of the kids on my middle school team, in fact, and I know this doesn't bode well for the future-- when we started this watermelon thing five years ago, it was a bunch of dads and a few twenty-somethings, but this year a lot of the older guys decided they would not participate-- they were too old and it was too exhausting-- and so we recruited a batch of kids, and they're just going to get bigger and stronger and angrier . . . eventually, vengeance will be theirs.