“I like baths and burning witches.”

To be fair, I have a problem which makes it difficult to understand speech which is whispered or mumbled, and Doré is a soft-spoken person.  I began to doubt what I heard.  I figured I had better ask for a repeat, or spend the rest of my life wondering if she’s thinking about hunting witches every time she’s sitting  in the hot tub at the Best Western.

“What?”

“I like Japs and starry ridges,” she clarified.

I was still hoping I might have it wrong.  I had to wait for the closing prayer to get clarification.  I leaned in even closer.

“I felt like saying ‘gentlemen, start your engines,’” she repeated.

So she’s not a witch hunter who enjoys a warm bath and starry nights and happens to have a strange affection for the people of Japan. It was a NASCAR reference all along.  First comes prayer, then comes The Star Spangled Banner, and then comes the traditional shout of “Gentlemen!  Start your engines!”  by some celebrity or other honorary figure.

Matthew McConaughey gave the best start your engines! shout in NASCAR history for the Daytona 500 in 2005, followed closely by Magic Johnson at the Los Angeles race.  At the 2004 Daytona 500, President Bush was disappointingly average.  It might seem insensitive for me to say this, but old ladies in wheelchairs do a terrible job.

Hey, don’t look at me like that.  You know where to go if you need a softer, politically correct take on things.  I tell it like it is.  I don’t follow anyone’s rules.  Not even my own.

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.

My Adidas F-50 soccer ball is named “Fivey,” mostly because “Fifty-ey” doesn’t work and “Effy” was out of the question.

Novalie’s pink Adidas size 4 soccer ball is named “Pink Bubble Gum.”

When you consider that there are (really) almost 300 ping pong balls in our home, it might surprise you to know that some of them have names.  One in particular.  In among the two boxes of 144 identical Killerspin® 2-star practice balls is a very naughty ping pong ball.  He’s indistinguishable from the others, but we always know which one he is.

His name is Strudel, and he’s the one ping pong ball that always rolls away from the rest, usually behind shelves or under furniture.  Strudel is by far the naughtiest of all ping pong balls.  Whenever he rolls away out of reach, we all roll our eyes and shake our heads.  ”Strudel!” we shout, as if to scold the little plastic ball.  But he never obeys.

I could kick a ball a quarter mile back in 1983.  I think it was a Mitre size 4.   Still my favourite ball of all time. My father recently found it – old, tattered, and faded – under the deck behind the house.

All I could do was hold it in my hands and remember back to when my youth soccer team used to joke with me and say “hey, Kevin, just tap it.”

I don’t remember where it started, but that became their way of telling me to boot it all the way down the field.

I had a strong right leg back then, owing to my blue collar work as a morning paper boy with the Tri-City Herald. Wednesdays and Sundays were the heavy days, and my quadriceps and calves grew as a result of hauling those paper bags up some of the steeper driveways on Wright Street in Richland, Washington.

By my second season, my coach only wanted one thing from me: “Stay behind the forwards, and if you get the ball anywhere inside the halfway line, shoot!”

My playing style is still largely the same now as it was then.

Albion doesn’t have terrain suitable to biking (dirt roads and hills), and I didn’t want Novalie to be restricted to the small cement basketball court down at the park.  We loaded up the new bike, all the safety gear, and Bolt, her stuffed-animal mascot.  We drove out near where I work.  I went up the hill a little to a large, empty, and mostly flat parking lot.  After Novalie geared-up and Bolt took his spot in the front basket, she took her seat behind the handlebars.  She was nervous.  I don’t know if it was the larger bike, or that she worried about going too fast in all this open space, but she was very uncertain.

“Don’t let go of me, Dad!” she said.  “It’s okay, Novalie, you know how to do this.  Just ride.”  Like parents do, I let go without Novalie ever realizing it, and she was free.

I watched as she rode away against the blinding light of the blue and white sky.  She rode in wide circles, talking and singing to herself, lost in another world of bicycle and imagination, the way a little child should be.  She has many important bike rides ahead of her.

Before we all start to embarrass ourselves by snickering at something we know we should be below our maturity level, let me just say that Mark Winterbottom is an athlete who deserves respect. The Australian V8 Supercars are not easy to drive. They’re powerful and tail-happy. They require a very careful touch and a lot of car control. Get on the throttle too quickly coming out of a corner, and the car will jump out from under you “like stepping on a cat’s tail.”

After that, it’s just the kangaroos to worry about.

I had been watching a V8 Supercars race on the Speed Channel, when the Australian announcer said something that would change my life forever.

“Up front! Rick Kelly has lassooed Winterbottom!”

It’s especially funny if you imagine it in an Australian accent, and if you pronounce “lasso” the Australian way. “Lassoo.”

This got me thinking about all the winterbottoms I had lassooed over the years. I didn’t have to think too far back. Sure, there are plenty of winterbottoms in the past that I can reminisce upon. Sledding at Carmichael Hill as a child. Anthony Lakes Ski Area 1988. Grand Targhee with Doré in 1995. Really, though, I needed to look no further back than this morning.

It was a tired and cranky Saturday morning in our household, which is fairly typical for us. Doré was feeling sick and tired, and I figured I needed to take Novalie and give Doré some space. I asked Novalie if she wanted to go outside with Daddy. “I want to play baseball!” she said.

After two or three minutes of throwing pitches to Novalie, we spent the next hour throwing snowballs, rolling snowmen, building snow forts, and generally rastlin’ in the snow. Novalie has more of a mêlée style of snowball combat. She likes to chase me through the snow and drill me from close range. I will inevitably tumble to the ground, and Novalie will dive on top of me to complete another victorious round of snowball competition.

Of course, at the end of the hour, we had both earned winterbottoms for ourselves. Winterbottoms that I hope we will both remember for years to come.

We decided that it would be good Friday night fun to go to a high school football game. The atmosphere, the energy, and Novalie was sure to love all the noise and commotion. It’s her thing. Just about the time I cheered with the other Moscovites at Moscow’s game-tying 35-yard touchdown pass, I looked over and noticed that neither Doré nor Novalie was watching the game.

“Did you see that?” I asked Doré, knowing full well that she hadn’t.
“Kevin, I’ve just been watching the students walking past this whole time.”

We weren’t seated very high in the bleachers, and we were between the entrance and the student section, so we got to see a large number of MHS students up close. Most of the classic cliques were represented. It was hard not to watch them, try to guess their personalities based on what they wore and how they carried themselves, and to guess what social groups they might belong to. This was clearly the thing that most interested Doré on that night.

“Which group do you think Novalie will join when she’s in high school?”
“I am so scared about that” was Doré’s reply.

Novalie’s attention was riveted to the Moscow High School band. They were just a few feet from us, on the other side of the stairs. As they played, two female students, dressed just like hippies from 1968, danced to each song. The whole thing had Novalie’s full attention, so we spoke to her about it.

“Are you watching the band?” Doré asked.
“You can dance if you want to,” I offered.

Novalie’s thoughts were very different from ours.

“I forgot to bring my harmonica,” she said. She didn’t want to watch or dance, she wanted to join the band.