It's a bird! It's a plane! It's SOCCERMAN!
When did I get so old and crumbly? When I was 18 I could run and play sports of all sorts all day, all weekend, all the time, without ever feeling especially tired or sore. And God knows I sure took full advantage of that.
I played soccer yesterday. It was the first game of the season. It never fails that I think I'm in perfectly good shape, having been lifting weights and running occasionally, and then when the season starts I find out the hard way that I need more work.
I got to the game early, as is now required by my advanced accumulation of injuries, and began warming up. I was the first person from either team to arrive at the field. I dribbled my soccer ball around until I got a good sweat going and then I started stretching a little. It's amazing how tight and inflexible my body has become from one season to the next. Once the rest of the team showed up I think I shot all of one whole practice shot, which went wide and I had to go chase. Before I could shoot any more the ref started the game.
I played most of the game at halfback. The other team quickly demonstrated their intention of simply sending 3 guys sprinting after a ball that their defense would kick way over all our heads in hopes that their guy could get there first and score on us. Since I was at halfback I was responsible for chasing them down and also running up behind our offense to support them.
This quickly made me tired.
I always seemed to be too far behind our offense to offer much support. Once, I was dribbling toward the center of the field and went to pass to our two strikers up ahead in front of the opponents' goal. But I didn't keep my eyes on the ball and ended up kicking it across the midfield line to no one in particular. This was not helpful to our team in any way, shape or form. It also gave our team coach a heart attack.
On one panic play our right wing and I were trying to get to the ball before it went out of bounds. I got there first and kicked it up field. But I didn't clear the right wing and ended up bouncing it off their butt and out of bounds. Again, this was not helpful to our team in any way, shape or form.
At one point in the game I was running side-by-side with one of their forwards. He was on my left, dribbling the ball, trying to break away towards our goal. Somehow I managed to twist my left knee while I was running at full speed and reach over with my right foot to kick the ball away from him. And after this I even kept my footing and did not fall down. I don't know how I did it, and now that I am thinking about it I don't know why the hell I did it like that. If this were videotaped by anyone they could use it to explain to athletes how a torn ACL occurs and why you should never, ever do what I did.
As I said, I played almost the entire game, so I am hoping my ACL is fine. It didn't hurt at the time. but it hurts today. I've already had ACL replacement surgery and if I tear it again, well, that's it for me. Plus, it just hurts like hell going through that, not to mention all the physical therapy which also hurts like hell. Generally speaking, tearing your ACL is a bad thing to do. So if you can avoid running at full speed and twisting your knee so that you can kick someone or something with your opposite foot, that would probably be a good idea.
Our two best players, our top scorers, were not at the game. One of them has joined another team in a higher league and we are currently plotting his death. The other was in Germany for some reason. Maybe he is a spy? I don't know. Unfortunately we weren't able to pull this game out without them. We lost 3-1.
Today I feel as if both of my knees are broken. I am walking around like Fred Sanford, all bent up and limping. Last night I slept in a fetal position, with my knees pulled up because they hurt. So I still want to know, when exactly did I get so old and crumbly?
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