I don’t really know what to do. One of the coaches of the Eager Beavers, a tall, tanned, muscular woman with a face like Mr. Ed, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Danny, you go in and play left fullback.” Because I’m an athlete now and I want everyone to know that, I trotted out to the middle of the soccer field and pretended to know what that meant.

“Is this where the fullback plays?” I asked the pale-skinned blonde kid next to me. He wears number eleven but the huge white numbers on his small green jersey are so large that they peek over the front of his shoulders like rudimentary vinyl epaulets.

He shrugs his shoulders. He’s slouched over and sullen and kind of looks like he wants his mommy.

“Hey, eleven? Wanna kick me in the shins?”

The somberness washes from his face, replaced on the fly with a gargantuan smile that reveals his catastrophic dental hygiene. He takes two steps towards me, swings his skinny leg back, and whack!

“Ow-how-howch!” I say through a giggle, grabbing my right shin and bouncing up and down on my left leg like Tom used to do when Jerry dropped an anvil on his foot.

“Your turn,” he says gleefully.

I look down at his ankles and see his thick, green socks swelling over the girth of two huge plastic and foam pads. The anticipation of kicking him reminds me of my friends Travis’ birthday party when it was my turn to hit the Fat Albert piñata. Poor Albert was two-thirds dismembered by the time I got the broomstick, and little sprinkles of Tootsie Rolls and butterscotch discs had trickled out with each of the three previous hits. No doubt about it: my whack was going to be the kill shot. I nailed him right in the throat and Albert’s torso went pinwheeling across the pizza parlor, spraying candy with each revolution. Kicking these fat shins was going to be just as rad.

Wind-up. Kick. Laughter.

“Your turn,” I say.

Wind-up. Kick. Laughter.

“Alex! Danny!” Coach Horseface calls from the sideline. Busted.

We turn in unison to look at her.

“Danny, I said you were left fullback,” she shouts. “That means back there, in front of the goal.”

It seems like five minutes elapse by the time I walk to where she’s pointing, and I’m not pleased when I get there. How am I supposed to score goals from here? I’m like five miles from the other goal. They never put Pelé at fullback. Horseface must not know I’m an athlete.

I whistle blows and the game begins. It’s hard for me to see the ball from all the way back here but I assume it’s somewhere in that huddled mass of flailing legs in the middle of the field. Kids fall and get back up. They push on each other. Frankly, this is beneath me.

Or so I thought.

Without warning, the ball squirts out of the midfield scrum and starts rolling right toward me. Fast. This is it. This is my moment. This is where I plant my flag in the ground, rip the green shirt from my chest, and say to the world without equivocation, “I! AM! AN ATHLETE!” Bring it on!

Strangely, my resolve weakens with each revolution the ball takes in my direction. I mean, yes, on paper I am a superstar. But I seem to be struggling where practical application begins. The ball is inbound, about twenty feet from me now, and my legs begin to involuntary piston up and down in a sorry variation of the pee-pee dance.

“What do I do?” I say out loud to no one in particular. “What do I do?!”

I hear a chorus of people yelling in the distance but I can’t make out what they’re saying. “Blifitch! Chipwit! Zhipinbawgoomidyit!”

I turn to the sideline for guidance, and there I see our other coach, a stunning, athletic blonde named Rocky. She’s jumping up and down, screaming at me. It’s hard to hear of the gibberish coming from the parents.

“WHAT?!” I yell.

“KIIIIIIICK ITTTTTT!” she shouts.

Oh. Right. I’m supposed to kick the ball.

I plant my left foot and drive my right foot forward, right into the ball. Or at least where the ball was before I looked to the sideline for help. Where is it? “Where is it?!” I shout.

Oh. It’s in the net.

Some kid from the other team is jumping up and down. Wait. I know that kid. That’s Travis! What’s he doing here?

“Hey! Trav!” I shout, trying to be heard over his cheering teammates.

He looks at me.

“Oh, hey, Danny.”

“Hey. Wanna kick me in the shins?”

*  *  *

 

Someone’s mom brought orange wedges, and at halftime all of the Beavers put one all the way in their mouths and left it there, pretending the dense orange peel was a mouth guard and each of us was Rocky Balboa.

“Yo Adrian! I did iittttt!”

This is awesome. Thirty minutes into my athletic career I was as happy as I’d ever been. Shin kicks. Orange wedges. People yelling my name from the sidelines. True, I’d yet to actually kick the ball. True, I may have had a little performance anxiety. But everything else about the game – everything not involving actual game play – was sweet like Reece’s Pieces.

“Hey, Danny,” a voice calls from behind me.

I turn around and see the coaches, Horseface and Rocky, behind me. Rocky is down on one knee, looking me in the eye, and Horseface is at her side with right hand resting on Rocky’s shoulder.

“Afhrafhrfh,” I say.

Rocky smiles. “Might be easier to talk if you take the orange out of your mouth.”

Point taken. I thrust the wedge outward with my tongue and grab the rind in my right hand. As I remove it from my mouth, a wellspring of saliva tags along, pouring our over my bottom lip and down onto the browning grass field. I lick my lips, wipe the back of my forearm across my mouth, and smile. I can still taste the orange on my tongue.

“Hi,” I say sheepishly, hoping they thought my slobber was juice from the orange.

“So listen, bub,” Rocky says, “you had a couple of chances to kick the ball in the first half. What happened there?”

“Dunno,” I say. “Just missed it, I guess.”

“Were you scared?”

“Pfft, no.” I summon a nervous laugh hoping it will support my claim.

Horseface, her hand still resting on Rocky’s shoulder, appears irritated with her co-coach’s coddling approach to my ineptitude.

“You’re eight years old, Danny,” she says matter-of-factly. “There’s nothing to be scared of. We’re just playing soccer, OK? When the ball comes to you, kick it. It’s that simple.”

“K.”

“Think you can do that?” Rocky adds.

“Yeah.”

“Good. You’re gonna be at fullback again in the second half. Go have some fun.”

I smile. She smiles, then stands, turns, and walks back toward the sideline. As she does so, she and Horseface catch each other’s glance and grin at each other. Then Horseface playfully smacks Rocky on the butt.

*  *  *

Twenty years after my humiliating introduction to competitive sport, I put the whole puzzle together.

Rocky and Horseface weren’t just co-coaches of a youth soccer team. They were gay lovers.

And Eager Beavers wasn’t just a cute name for a soccer team. It was representative of the coaches’ excitement about one another’s genitals.

Comments

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Well who doesn't like a cute little furry thing that's fun to play with? Sheesh.

Only in SoCal

I have a feeling every dad on that team showed up faithfully at every game that season.

LOL...just read that part in the book a while ago...still loving it, by the way...strangely learning more about myself through yourself. Thanks again for the book.

Could've been worse. Your team name could've been the Eager Carpet Munchers.

It's a special time in a young man's life when he figures out that two women can love one another... and he wants pictures.

were your uniforms pink?

Ahhhhh nothing like the first time a young child realizes that sometimes two girls, or boys, like to get naked together and touch each others 'special places.'

Eager Beavers is too much. They didn't try to hide it too well did they?

If it's any consolation, I was 27 before I stopped kicking guys in the shins in my free time and finally noticed straight women.