Encouraging Words

My grandson Sam has an iPhone. If i remember correctly, he is close to the age we gave Sarah hers, although it was a long time before iPhones. i will not be a curmudgeon (for a moment) and make some dumbshit observation about walking to school in the snow without a cell phone when i was young. In fact, i think it’s a good thing he has one: it has a security aspect in that he can get in touch with his mother or father when he might be confronted with a problem. It also is giving him what has become an essential life skill, the capability to use a phone and electronics, the world of the cloud.

It also gives me the ability to communicate with him at any time. We have “Facetimed” together once, on which i commented here several weeks ago. i have been trying to figure out what i could do when and what i shouldn’t do when when Blythe, my daughter, Sam’s mother, clued me in — i take some substantial “clueing in” a lot according to Blythe, my other daughter Sarah, and Maureen.

So this afternoon, knowing Sam would be at soccer practice, i decided to text him to give him some encouragement about practice. It was then i realized i know no soccer terms except “GOOOAAALLL!!!” And man, i hate that almost as “Going, Going, Gone.”

My terms of encouragement back in my sports days were fairly simple:

Basketball: “Don’t double dribble”/”Keep your hands up” / “Use a bounce pass.”

Football: “Kick ’em long”/”Hit ’em hard”/”Watch his belly button; he can’t fake you out with that.”

Baseball: “Swing level”/”Use your body to block the ball”/Use both hands to catch a fly”

There seems to be little cross over. “Kick ’em long” seems about the only one which might apply to soccer. But is that a good thing?

What a pickle.

2 thoughts on “Encouraging Words

  1. Check out DUCKSTERS: SOCCER RULES AND PENALTIES, that will get you going with vernacular. You may not know but when my son’s were 6 and 8, they asked to sign up for soccer (that was the first year of the AYSO, the American Youth Soccer Organization in San Diego). I was asst. Coach with both teams. Boy, did I learn fast. Good luck Cuj, it’s considered to be the purist sport in the world… there’s a position for everyone no matter what level of skill you may be.

    1. But all they do is kick the ball down the field while trying not to (excuse me, Andy Griffith) kick it in something except the goal, yet unlike football, they get to step in whatever that something is.

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