Lace ’em Up!
They used to rest near the door, sometimes to dry, or just not smell-up the rest of the place. Sometimes they's just be left in whatever bag you took to practice. When you were young, you took care of them. Polished them. Treated them with special oil. You remember your first pair of PUMA King Pele’s, bought a size too small on purpose. Better feel of the ball, they said. And came with word of mouth instructions to stand in a full tub for thirty minutes with them on, and then wear them around the house for a couple of days. You mother didn’t approved, but you did it anyway because your were fifteen and stupid.
Soccer became your life, though your commitment to it failed to improve your grades. You didn’t care, and your report card reflected this. “Don’t you want to go to college,” your father asked one day when looking at your grades, not your cleats. He didn’t play soccer. He wrote stories for The Grey Lady as she’d come to be known. You tell everyone this fact in an attempt to impress, which also fails to improve your grades.
Though you stay committed to the most beautiful game, your PUMAs prove to be inferior product when the sole unglues from the boot—a term you just learned and use to impress. It doesn’t. Soon, you find yourself drawn to Adidas, still in the family but manufactured across the river. Two brothers fighting for world football dominance. You remember the day you finally go for the Copas. Your mother has a heart attack when you tell her they cost a hundred dollars. You have to have them, you think and say. No you don’t, she thinks and says back.
Years later, after leaving the beautiful game and German boot fold for a new game featuring a plastic flat ball, you try various alternatives on your feet until finally coming home to Copas. Somehow, they, like you, are still around. Your friends are impressed you can squeeze you wide feet into these narrow cleats. But you do, like a bride and groom fitting back into wedding dress and suit, the memories enough to make it work. Just no pictures, please.
It’s exactly two weeks until you cleat up again for your once a year foray with a sport you came to love. Ultimate. Throw, run and catch. You have trained for nine months, and have recently taken your Copas out of the closet to test drive them on the fields and parks of you home town. They look good, you think. You don’t, look good, or at least your running doesn’t. But that’s OK. Because you are in fact running, which is in and of itself remarkable.
With two weeks to go you start to think about tapering. Ha! Tapering from a jog means you’ll be walking. And if you walk around in your good looking Copas, people may wonder what’s up with that man, who is dressed for work but has cleats on. But you no longer care, about what people are thinking, or how well you did in school. You care about Game One, of six.
Lace ‘em up!
