I laughed pretty hard during the 1989 movie Uncle Buck when John Candy, as Buck, asks “Does my hat bother you?  Because some people get angry at the sight of it.”

Don’t think I’ll be able to tie that old movie quote to the current topic?  You obviously don’t know how ADHD works.  Watch.

In my family are several who don’t simply ignore soccer, not caring about the teams or leagues, but actually hate soccer, and become angry at the very sight of it being played. See how I did that?  I pity you people with your totally predictable brains.  Maybe there’s a pill you can take to give you ADHD so you’ll suddenly see the connections between all things.

Returning to the topic, when the World Cup begins, I feel the lonely and confused stares of friends and family upon me.  It’s time for me to step up again and explain to them the frightening sporting spectacle to which their televisions are now beholden.

If I could introduce an average soccer-ignoring American to soccer with my choice of any soccer league, tournament or competition, I certainly would not choose the World Cup! My favorite team, The Royal Arsenal of London, began last season by out-scoring their opponents 22-8 in the first five games.  Did you hear that?  That’s an average of six goals total per game! Then comes the World Cup.  The only time most Americans can be bothered to watch a soccer match.  There aren’t nearly as many goals even though these are the same players scoring every week professionally.  The logic is painfully simple:  if you can win seven games in a row, you’re the world champion.  If you screw up even once, your World Cup dreams will burst like the fragile soap bubbles floating in the summer air.

Then comes “They never score, there’s no real action.  All the injuries are fake.  I don’t get the offside rule. Didn’t 96 fans die in 1989 during the Hillsborough Stadium disaster in England?”

Lately, I’ve changed my approach.  During all the years that I’ve been an American soccer fan, I’ve had to analyze and understand sports, what makes a sport interesting, even addicting to its fans, and why it is Americans don’t “get” soccer.  I’ve suffered this because, for some reason, the people around me feel that somehow I owe them an explanation for liking the world’s most popular sport.

Here’s my new approach, America:  you already understand soccer! Do you understand offense and defense in basketball?  If so, you can coach a soccer team, because they are identical! Do you understand the hook or slice, as in golf or baseball?  Then you already know the different ways that a ball can be kicked to get the pass or shot on target! Did you know that football, baseball, and soccer are all addictive to their fans for the very same reason?  First semester psychology: the random reward! A first down, touchdown, base hit, home run, or goal doesn’t happen during most plays.  Most attempts at scoring in all these sports end in failure.  But sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes they come from nowhere.  Sometimes it all clicks and the scores start pouring in.  It could happen at any moment, and that’s the addiction.  Like slot machines in Vegas.  So don’t peer down your horn-rimmed spectacles at me, Mr. Football or Baseball Fan.  You suffer the same addiction as I.  There is no distance between us.

Earlier today, in typical fashion, Uruguay put all eleven players in defense against the high-scoring and very talented France team.  I was at ProFormance Physical Therapy in Pullman, exercising, balancing, stretching, and breaking scar tissue while the match played on their wall-mounted HDTV.  I had heard a few comments from the staff about all the diving and fake injuries they expected to see.  I had something to say about that, but I held my tongue.  The game soon provided all the evidence I needed.

Doing reps on the hip sled, I looked up at the screen to see the referee show a red card and eject one of the Uruguayans, as a French player lay still in the grass, in apparent pain.  Troy, my brilliant and handsome knee therapist, said in somewhat cynical tone “Ha.  You just watch, he’ll be up and doing back flips in two minutes.”

“He darn well better be!” I said aloud, sitting up as I finished my last set of leg presses.  The downed French player?  Bacary Sagna, right fullback for Arsenal.

The staff stood to watch the replay, ready to laugh at an obvious flop.  What they saw had them gasping and covering their mouths.  ”My God!  Is it broken?”

They say when you take a hit like that, and both bones of your lower leg are broken, the snap can be heard for two blocks.  Sagna was in a lot of pain, but his leg was intact, likely he was able to lift his foot from being locked in the turf at the last second, or maybe the tackler pulled back at the last moment to minimize impact.

“Divers” deserve the match suspensions and bad reputations they get, but I’ll take a fake injury any day.

When I was a poet, an artist, and even musician, it would have been up to me to capture that sudden moment of beauty when the setting sun lit the clouds over the dark and frozen hills.  Not anymore.  I don’t have to think about how to describe the clouds, the colors, or even how I would explain the patches of bright yellow sunlight breaking through in spots where there were no clouds.  Someone else can do it.

One night during the summer of 2000, I was leaving the Staples store in Logan, Utah where I worked.  The manager unlocked the front door to let the employees out, then stepped out and locked the door behind him.  We usually waited for him, so we could all walk to our cars together.  As I stood on the sidewalk in front of the store, I looked up across the dark valley at the top of the mountains on the east.  There, a full moon was just beginning to rise above the peaks.  As I looked closely, I could see the distant silhouette of the pine trees against the rising moon.  “Wow,” the manager said when I pointed it out to him.  “It’s true.  You really can see them.  I’ve never noticed before.”

That’s when I got the idea that I am very different from the people who “never noticed before.”  For some reason, the people who couldn’t be bothered to notice a full moon rising over a mountain peak were the same people who seemed to be accomplishing things and progressing in their lives.  My life, it seemed, had become a vicious circle of failure.  I couldn’t seem to advance in either school or work.  I had to place the blame somewhere.

I soon decided that I wouldn’t look up anymore.   Every stretch of moonlight across snow, every sunrise across the river, and every light breeze on a green summer day became a problem for someone else.  My new strategy was to experience each moment as deeply as possible, but not capture it in any way.

In the summer of 2004, when Novalie was only a year old, we were having one of our daddy-daughter days at the Willow Park Zoo in Logan.  Having visited the bobcats, we made our way back to the grassy area of the small zoo, and I held Novalie up against me so that her head was above mine.   I looked up at her as the wind moved the sunlight through her wispy baby hair.  She looked down at me and spoke softly in her baby voice as she held my head tightly.  I suddenly became aware that I was living an important moment that I would remember for the rest of my life.  A moment I would want back almost as soon as it was over.  Immediately I knew that there was nothing I could do to capture or save that moment in time.  I had to let it happen.  I had to let it pass.  I couldn’t hold it.

I was thankful not to have the responsibility of capturing that moment, because I didn’t know how.

Like a snowflake melting in my hand, I could only give it all my attention until it was gone.

This morning was my scheduled stress-test with very-pleasant cardiologist Dennis Simpson. The nurse had just finished prepping me, and as I sat waiting with electrodes attached to burning skin on the dry-shaved patches of my chest, I watched my heart rate on the monitor.

At first it was around 90 beats-per-minute, normal for me at a doctor’s office.  I knew I could bring it down with my thoughts, I was just surprised at which thoughts they were.

First, I put myself at a beach.  96 beats-per-minute.  Not what I expected.

Next, I was strapped into an 800-horsepower American stock car getting ready to fire the engine and roll out on to the track.  Result:  81 bpm.

I sort of expected that.  There’s something comforting to me about having the skills to drive in a race and the perfect vehicle with which to do it, not to mention the state of meditation induced by the level of focus that race driving requires.

Then I tried table-tennis.  I was hitting forehands with Que at the WSUTTC.  That put me up a little, around 86 bpm.

Then I went on a Sunday evening walk.  Result:  97 bpm.

Now I understand.  Those quiet “relaxing” moments are the times when my mind races the most.  Planning and analyzing all the ways I’m going to solve all of my life’s problems.  It’s only the activities which occupy all of the mind’s focus which truly relax me.

This doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind.  I still think Doré is crazy.

Just like me.

There was some personal comfort in that warmth that morning and I began to think that everything . . .

“Daddy, the song needs to be louder!” called Novalie from the back seat. I gave the volume button a tap. “More!” she shouted with enthusiasm. Another bump of the volume.

“Is that good, Novalie?”
“Breakdown!” She screeched, almost in sync with Axl Rose, and so it was loud enough. During the piano and guitar solos, Novalie sang her own lyrics.

“I love! I love who I love!” sang her little four-year-old soul. Has she learned at this age that all songs must be about love?

In later songs, her lyrics changed slightly.

“I want to be! I want what I want to be!” She bellowed. Then I recognized the common feeling in Novalie’s various song lyrics. They’re about freedom, limitless possibility, and making one’s own choices in life.

When I look around, everybody always brings me down
Is it them or me, well I just can’t see
but there ain’t no peace to be found
But if someone really cared, well they’d take the time to spare
a moment to try and understand another one’s despair -
Remember in this game we call life that no one said it’s fair
-Guns N’ Roses, Breakdown

We never found Wal-Mart, and that was just fine with me. I was content to drive in the morning sun and learn about Novalie through her songs. The Taurus could wait for an oil change.