Gooooool!

For the past four weeks, with the exception of one rain date, we’ve spent Saturday mornings at Marcel’s soccer practice.

Much to my chagrin, Marcel has never evidenced much interest in playing ball of any sort.  If I turn the TV to football, Marcel falls out into a spasm, as if I’d taken away her lunch.  Her various sport toys collect dust, while Marcel turns her attention to the music, art and kitchen toys.  Even as a baby, the only attention she would give to balls that I rolled her way was the occasional attempt at chewing them.  There’s so much value in team sports, however, from fitness to socialization, that I’d thought we’d give it a try, anyway.

We couldn’t just show up, though.  We had to get equipment, including her own soccer ball. Somehow, someway, Marcel must have heard about soccer–we’re a football household–and was intrigued by the prospect of getting equipment for playing the game.  So, when I told Marcel that we would have to get soccer equipment, she got very interested.  In fact, she even queried about it over and over.

“Soccer?  We’re going to play soccer?”

Eventually, we got to the sporting goods store one school night.  Here, we started to get off track.  We started in the section with shin guards.  I was a little befuddled by the selection.  Apparently, soccer equipment had come a long way since I played in high school.  Things were further complicated by the fact that Marcel wasn’t as interested in the selection as I was, but preferred the opportunity to run wild in a new environment, instead. It took quite an effort to corral her long enough to choose a pair.

The next sign of trouble was choosing the soccer ball.  Ignoring the classic white and black hexagonal design, as well as a sleek blue, silver and white number, Marcel settled on a pink version.  I admit that I briefly  wondered if a girlie color would impede a competitive spirit but quickly shrugged it off.  Style and heart, I concluded, need not be exclusive to each other.  After picking out a BPA-free water bottle, we finally headed over to the cleats.

There, we came across a mother-daughter combination buying cleats, too.  That daughter was significantly older than my Marcel–5 or 6 years older, at least–and she knew what she was doing.  Marcel was fascinated by the girl and her routine of trying on, then testing, her cleats, and she couldn’t wait to mimic the girl with her own sprint through the store.  Finally, I thought, Marcel is interested in sports.

Then soccer practice started.

She was good for the first half of practice.  She not only played close attention to the instructor, but she even did a fair impression of his moves.  Keep this up, I thought, and I’ll be able to buy tickets to the 2028 Olympics!  Then Marcel noticed the playground equipment.

A sly smile spread across her face, then she made a mad dash for the colorful jungle gym, without even once looking back at her soccer ball.  I grabbed her up before she reached paydirt and carried her back to the  square patch of grass marked off with tiny, orange traffic cones that served as our “soccer field”, and told her to finish practice.  Her interest lied elsewhere, though, namely this new game of “catch the playground” with her dad.  Ultimately, the only way I could get her to focus on the soccer instruction was to bribe her with the promise of a brownie.

Over time, her interest  flagged so much so that, by the most recent practice, Marcel was no longer asking about soccer.  On the contrary, she was openly protesting even having to put on her cleats.  Still, we made the trek out to practice, with me struggling to find ways to motivate and inspire her to appreciate the sport.

For the first few moments, nothing came to mind.  I stood by her as she stood by her ball looking at the practice from our forlorn corner of the square.  Eventually, the instructor asked everybody to carry their ball to the center and start stretching and Marcel grudgingly complied.  Then he started slowly running around the square and, as Marcel and the rest of the students dribbled behind him, he asked the group to try to hit him with their balls.

Then Marcel hit him.

Then I lost my cool.

“Yeah, Marcel,” I yelled, jumped and clapped!  For the past five minutes, Marcel had, slowly, got more and more engaged, which was thrilling enough.  And she also had exhibited new skills in controlling her ball.  This also thrilled me.  Most importantly, however, when I spontaneously cheered, she beamed with joy, which thrilled me even more!

Maybe she was just happy that she hit the coach and won the game.  But maybe my cheering was the means I had been looking for to motivate and inspire her through practice and, maybe, even to the Olympics!  Maybe I was the one who had hit paydirt or, as that famous, Spanish-speaking, soccer announcer Tony Tirado would say, made “Goooooooooooooool!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

So, when the class had moved onto the new drill–a pseudo-jumping jack, except the kids kept their hands on their hips and jumped around their soccer ball–I started cheering wildly, again.  Marcel, however, didn’t beam this time.  Instead, my 3 y.o. flashed a 13 y.o.’s embarrassment and impatience and shouted me down with a very stern, “Daaaaaaaaaaaaad.”

And, thus, it appeared we had both got a little ahead of ourselves.

 

Little Warrior

In French, Marcel’s name means “little warrior”. Last Sunday, she lived up to it.

Marcel got restless during church service, so we left. Because I had promised a trip to the playground to buy her cooperation with dressing that morning, I decided to take her to the playground while my parents and wife enjoyed the rest of the service.

A jungle gym, more suited to elementary school children than toddlers like Marcel, dominated the first playground that we found. Eventually, though, I happened to spy another, more colorful playground down the path a bit, so we decided to check it out.

That playground was dominated by a sandbox and a swing set. Given that she was in her Sunday best, I, and I’m sure her mother, would’ve preferred she ran to the swings. Of course, though, she ran for the sandbox.

I don’t blame her for her interest. This was a very cool sandbox. In addition to being much, much bigger than the average, every day sandbox, it also had a colorful jungle gym-type structure–the color I saw from a distance–that had lifts to carry small buckets of sand and tubes to slide the sand around the structure and back to the ground. Moreover, the sandbox was strewn with toys, including an old play kitchen, toy garden and construction tools, and the expected shovels and pails. This was sandbox heaven. And, Sunday clothes be damned, Marcel jumped right into the fray.

Marcel, however, wasn’t the only child. Two boys, of a family more engrossed with their picnic than their supervisory duties, were in the midst of some great adventure. Like the two other mothers at the sandbox, however, I was too engrossed in my kid to care too much about those kids. (Those mothers and I spent quite a bit of time talking about how gorgeous my Marcel was!) Marcel, though, was very much interested in those boys.

Or, should I say, she was very much interested in the toys the boys were collecting. Of course, she would. What good is sand if you can’t push it around and toys always make pushing sand around more effective and exciting. Marcel would have that excitement. So, she went after the toys.

Fortunately, she didn’t just run up on the boys, who seemed to be twice her age. She was decent enough to wait until the boys had abandoned the toys, first. That is, she waited until they looked like they had abandoned the toys. In reality, the boys weren’t abandoning any toys, at all. Instead, they were collecting and hoarding them for themselves, alone, for some little boy purpose. But neither Marcel or I knew that. As far as we know, the toys were abandoned.

So, Marcel grabbed a plastic beach tote of abandoned sand toys and began playing with them in the sand. This, however, was too much for the boys. One, maybe at the urging of the other, ran over to Marcel and took a toy that she had momentarily laid to the side while she used her hands.

Now, this upset me. If some stranger had taken a thing that I was using, I would’ve said something, struggling the whole time to keep a smile on my face and civility in my voice. I’ve had my fill of bullies and am eager to do battle these days, however counterproductive. Only the great desire for high achievement, frankly, keeps me from murder.

In this instance, I was also chastened by my opposition. No matter who’s right and who’s wrong, when it’s man versus child, the man is the bully and wrong party. I had to hold my tongue. Marcel, however, did not.

At first, though, she did hold her tongue, which surprised me. I think “mine” is one of five first words mastered by every child and Marcel wasn’t too far off that mark. But, in the moment of the theft, she was apparently too preoccupied by what she was doing with the sand in front of her to care about that toy. Her reaction, when she finally did decide to react, was yet another surprise.

“I’m going to go help them, daddy.” she said. Then she picked up her tote and ran after the boys.

Now, bully or not, I was prepared to intervene. Clearly, these boys felt “entitled”. That, plus their general immaturity, spelled troubled. Worse, one of those two mothers from earlier was sitting next to the brats. So, there was going to be trouble AND a witness. Still, my baby comes first. So I followed, preparing to get ugly.

Marcel, though, was a step quicker and got to the boys before I could. There reaction was as expected. The other boy–the ring leader–stepped to Marcel, first. He was soon joined by his errand boy. Together, they loomed over Marcel and, by the time that I got there, had already started making their demands.

“Give us our toys,” barked the ring leader.

Unsuspecting this response, Marcel was first struck dumb. I think she might have even taken a step back. Then the errand boy made a grab for her tote. That’s when she recovered. She yanked the tote back just out the boy’s reach then took a step to her aggressors in order to better thrust out her chin.

“They’re not your toys!”

“We had them first,” the ring leader almost pleaded.

“You have to share!”

Maybe that last scream was too much for even Marcel. She turned to me at that point, with a look of concern on her face, wondering if she were in trouble. She didn’t have to worry. Marcel had invoked the high commandment of playgrounds all around the world. Even I, a near forty year old man, recognized the righteousness of her cause. Instead of rebuke, she actually ellicited an involuntary “amen” on that glorious Sunday morning. Fortified, she turned back to the boys and reemphasized her point.

“Share!”

Maybe the boys were swayed by Marcel’s arguments. Maybe, it was her attitude. Maybe they just noticed, for the first time, her big bodyguard. Either way, they conceded. The errand boy even threw, at Marcel’s feet, the plastic construction tool he had grabbed earlier.

“You can have this one”, he said.

Victorious, my little warrior picked up her prize and joined them in their digging.