The Tale of the Two Jakes

So, after yesterday’s doom and gloom post I was glad that today we were out of the house for something a lot less depressing.  We were picking up Princess Sack of Potatoes for a sleep over.  And before coming home we watched her team’s weekly soccer game.  Now any parent knows that five- and six-year-olds playing soccer consists mostly of a scrum of eight or ten kids in a circle kicking the ball back and forth at each other’s shin guards.  Luckily at this stage of my career as a soccer spectator all I’m looking for is a lack of drama from the parents and at least one goal for “our side.”

And the soccer gods were smiling down on us today and “our side” got most of the goals.  But more accurately the Two Jakes got almost all the goals.  And it was something of a doppelganger experience.  Each team had a little boy named Jake.  And each Jake was probably about four feet tall with closely cropped dirty blond hair, the number “4” on his jersey and a monomaniacal drive to get the ball in the goal.  These two boys were the only players on the field who knew how to dribble the soccer ball and this allowed them to dominate the ball until faced by a wall of opponents.

Luckily for our side, their coach had drilled them all to run for the goal if the other team got the ball and this allowed us to effectively limit their Jake to two goals.  Unfortunately for the other team, their coach hadn’t equipped them with this strategy so our Jake had the opportunity to score about a half dozen goals.

Other than the coincidences of name, number and appearance there is nothing unusual about two teams at this age only having one competent striker.  But the reason I mention this situation has to do the with the boys’ fathers.  Because they were both cheering on their sons with the same name, they caught each other’s attention and began a conversation that I could overhear.

And it was a pleasant surprise to hear them both comparing notes on their sons’ drive to score goals.  Both of them complimented the other on their son’s skills and both seemed to disclaim having anything to do with it.  You could tell they were both a little proud but neither was at all wound up while watching the game and there wasn’t any of the embarrassing sidelines haranguing that is so awful to see at these games.  There was plenty of applause and cheering when goals were scored (or missed) but both of them behaved as adults watching very young children play a game.  Compared to the behavior of so many parents at these events, it was a breath of fresh air.

And that provided me with just enough hope for humanity to shake off the grim shadow of life in Joe Biden’s America for today.  When we got home, I spent a little time talking about the game with my granddaughter and discovered that for her the most important things about the game were that they had scored at least one goal and that they got to buy something from the ice cream truck.  And in retrospect her priorities seem about right.

But it was nice to see two grown men behaving like grown men.  Maybe that leads to two more grown men a generation from now.