A story from my childhood...

I played soccer through much of my childhood, back when children were still allowed to participate in sports that had seasons. I played club soccer in the fall through middle school, and then in high school also played school soccer in the spring.

I think I started in 1976, the second year that there was organized socceer in my home town, and our initial coaches were parents, and the sum total of their knowledge was contained in the booklet they got from the league.

As I got older, we got a British coach who was much more skilled, and when I got to high school, our coach was a Frenchman named Francois. We like Francois, mostly because his accent was so thick that none of our parents could understand him (my mother said that he practiced his accent to keep it that way).

Around that time, there were a number of asian refugees that settled in our area, and one of them, a player by the name of Vu Tran, joined our team. He was pretty good player, but not a great one, so we were always wondering why Francois always wanted us to see Vu play.

(say it out loud...)

(I'm sorry...)

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 12, 2006
  I thought people in US like football game more than soccer, but it's nice to hear from a soccor fan:D
• Anonymous
  April 12, 2006
  Groan.... You even got me to the point of searching google for this Vu Tran soccer dude out of curiosity - which makes the groan factor even worse.
• Anonymous
  April 13, 2006
  "back when children were still allowed to participate in sports that had seasons"
  
  I don't understand this comment.
  
• Anonymous
  April 13, 2006
  I think this post is 12 days late. :)
• Anonymous
  April 13, 2006
  Wow, that was a super long setup. Well done funny man!
• Anonymous
  April 13, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  April 13, 2006
  S'il vous plaît has an L sound in it. I am canadian. I like hockey.
• Anonymous
  April 13, 2006
  That's 2 minutes of my life you owe me back:)
• Anonymous
  April 13, 2006
  Soccer is a participation sport. More kids in Canada actually play soccer then hockey.
  In any case, I've recently started a new website to discuss soccer, but stumbled on your blog as I was searching for some unrelated programming info.
  
  Peace out!
  
• Anonymous
  April 14, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  April 17, 2006
  Don't get it
• Anonymous
  April 17, 2006
  Mellowman,
  
  I generally believe that explaining a joke can only make it less funny, which in this instance is a positive boon, so:
  
  In French, "please" is expresssed as "S'il vous plaît" ("sill voo pleh"), though the common mispronunciation among english-speakers is "see voo play".
  
• Anonymous
  June 09, 2009
  PingBack from http://quickdietsite.info/story.php?id=10096