Today Pierson had soccer practice. While he was playing with his team I noticed there was another game being played. Both sides were entirely Mexican. This ethnic/language barrier did not stop Gary, my friend, and myself from walking onto the field and playing with them.  I barely understood what they were saying but the smiles and laughter happened for all of us through out the whole game.

I find it strange that I can join in a game of soccer with guys who look like gangsters, and who most people would avoid if they saw them walking down the street and have a perfectly good time, but when I play at the so-called Christian YMCA with white upstanding looking people I want to fight after every game and am mad for a few days later. Greed, envy,  and revenge seem to be the top three attitudes at the Young Men's Christian Association. Why?

Maybe the idea of playing for fun is somehow lost in adults, that we bend to the pressures of growing up and in that process we bend fun too far and break it, or the devil has his foot in the door of the YMCA building that houses two crosses and a soccer field. Courtney, on the other hand has another take on  the misbehaviors at the YMCA. She says that the man in charge allows people who don't know what the word recreational means to play the game. These people who had a bad day at work, or a bad time with their life choose to try and prove that their not losers by playing like idiots at the YMCA.

The guys I played with today must understand that their lot in life is different. Maybe there is a different expectation of what success to them is, or maybe they are the true Christians. Either way in the end they all yelled "Amigo!" at Gary and I, and it felt good. This game today reaffirmed to me that the good people aren't always were they should be, and they sometimes don't look like what you would expect them to. So next time, you the reader, see someone who looks respectable getting into their huge gas guzzling SUV with the stickers made by child slave labor all over the back of  it, and they look as if they have it all, don't feel one bit of envy, because they probably play soccer at the Y.

Have you bent fun too far and it's broken? Don't play well with others? Has it been so long that you've forgotten the rules of playtime? Want to get that kid in your heart back? Then  let Courtney's observations on Boys at play refresh your memory.

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