Sport-O-Rama

Hello again, sports fans, and welcome to another installment (that word really has two "l"s?...) of Wonderboy, starring Q Johnstadt. This week's sport? Soccer!

Actually, it was last week's sport, too. Q spends Monday through Friday, 9:00 to 3:00, at the Soccer Academy on the Williams campus. There are probably sixty kids at this week's session, and there were around a hundred at last week's. Q is one of maybe thirty holdovers. He's playing in the lower division (you have to be at least 8 to attend, and he turned 8 quite recently), and last week his team was Spain, coached by a young man named Joe who, I think, plays for Williams. The shirts they got were red, and I wrote "JOHNSTADT" and a big number 8 on the back. They would play other countries and at the end of the week, one of them would win. Last Friday they announced that Spain was tied with Sweden, but that Sweden won the tiebreaker because they scored more goals. Q was pretty heartbroken.

But that was soon remedied, because each country gave out a medal for "Best Attitude", and Q was last week's recipient. In his presentation speech, Joe said, more or less, "It seemed like everybody on our team wanted to play center-forward, but we had one player who was happy to play anywhere. 'Who wants to play goalie?" 'I DO!' 'Who wants to play center back?' 'I DO!' And that voice was always Q's." He was ever so proud, as was I, standing back behind the bleachers where the end-of-camp meeting was being held. I was chatting with the fathers of Q's friends Eli and Brady, who were on other teams.

And who each also won the "Best Attitude" medal for their teams. It was a very weird moment, as each of us congratulated the other men on our sons' performance. In a sea of probably 130 parents, we all happened to be standing together. I can't quite figure it out - seems there must be some significance. But maybe not - like those parades of some not-normally-social insect I remember reading about that occasionally marches in columns that are hundreds of yards long, rivers of them, heading off in a direction for a purpose no one knew. Turns out it was a drought, and they were all trying to cannibalize each other, while avoiding being cannibalized, and that tension between the two desires shook out, in a sort of brownian motion, into a parade to nowhere. Maybe it's like that. Somehow.

ANY-hoo, Q is back in soccer practice this week, and is really enjoying it, though this week his team appears to be less of a powerhouse. He didn't score any goals today and his team played to two ties and a loss. I tried to buck him up by telling him that you can often learn more, and improve yourself more, by playing on a poor team than on a winner. That seemed to help him cope.

Though it was also probably the fact that we were getting closer and closer to the Willliams College Pool, a facility to which all campers are entitled access after each day's practice. Very few take advantage, but Q insists on it - and after running for miles in the sun for six hours, he deserves it. So we always go, he and I, and take a dip. His swimming ability has skyrocketed lately - he does a proto-freestyle crawl, and also fires himself off the side of the pool and dolphin kicks for several seconds. And he asks me about Michael Phelps a lot. Must be watching some commercials here and there about the Olympics. Which should be fun to watch - I hear the air is so bad in Beijing that you can actually sometimes unexpectedly inhale turds. Should make for an interesting marathon. i think the helicopter shots might not be as effective as they were in, say, Sydney.

T, meanwhile, continues to charm and amaze. She and I took a bike ride after supper on the Burley Piccolo while Q played ping-pong with Janneke, and she went into a very long and detailed narrative about why it was that one should never live close to a farm. I didn't really follow the logic, but it was so heartfelt and supported with so many strangely unintelligible details that I felt quite convinced by the end of it.

We have painted a room orange and cleaned out the basement in anticipation of the arrival of the van de Stadt side of the family (or most of them) in the coming days - Monique arrives Thursday, and three days later, I think, come the Chipi-Ripis from Alabama, followed in quick succession by the Bidi-Boos aus der Schweiz. Most are staying with us (two in the aforementioned orange room), but a few are going to be billeted in the house of Magnus and Margaret, who live up the street and who will be away for the length of the families' visit. So let's have a round of applause for Magnus and Margaret!

Magnus, despite his name (it's not his fault - he's from Iceland), is a nifty guy, who, having seen me doing some jogging around the neighborhood, invited me to go on a ten-mile jog with him and his brother last Sunday. He's training to run in the NY Marathon. I laughed, and then accepted.

I had never run that far before (10K was my previous max), and it was downright pleasant! We rolled along at a little more than nine-minute miles, and I tell you, this whole "Chi running" thing is working out wondrously. (Aside to Jim: I just had the book sent to you. It's going to change your life.) I haven't been hurt running in...Damn. Shouldn't have said that. You know the next time I run, my knees are going to spontaneously combust. It's now absolutely bound to happen.

Ah well, it was good while it lasted. I ran non-stop for damn near two hours on Sunday, and am none the worse for wear! In fact, I used the nifty mapping tool that Magnus and Brad told me about on Google Earth to map out a route that would be precisely 6 miles, and ran that bastard this very day, once again at nine minutes a mile. Feeling great! Sassy, even! Y'know what, actually? I can't BE injured! Come on, universe! Injure me! I dare you! You can't stop me! To quote my favorite politician: "I am a f***ing steamroller!"

Ten points to the first reader to tell me who this politician is...