Legal Commentary

A soccer game on a steamy spring afternoon in Houston

By Beldar

The drizzle earlier in the afternoon hadn't been enough to wash the high-count grass and tree pollen out of the air. With brilliant shafts of late afternoon spring sunshine now wandering across the soccer field, this was definitely a "two coats of sunscreen" day, and you you could almost, but not quite, see the clouds of humidity just above the grass. Of course, no one who really knows Houston would have mistaken today for August, but the conditions were still far from ideal. And when the other team's bus driver took them to the wrong middle school, the prospect of a win by forfeit for the home-team Johnston Greyhounds grew more attractive, at least to the adult fans present.

Still, the other team wanted to play, and this was already a make-up game for one rained out earlier in the season. Anyway, the seventh and eighth grade girls on the Greyhounds hadn't signed up for varsity soccer just to compile a record. They wanted to play too. And so they cheered when the other team's bus finally hove into view.

The littlest Greyhound had already renewed her generous coat of sunscreen. She demonstrated once again for her dad how well she'd learned (from him, or at least with his encouragement) to rinse her mouth with a huge gulp of tepid water. She gargled, and then spat it onto the ground with such forceful defiance as to mock the very idea that boys, or men, might also try to play this game from time to time.

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on April 02, 2008 (boomark / email).