In the great karmic balance of the universe, my over-the-top pride in avoiding all team sports as an adolescent came back to bite me, as an adult, with the installation of an equally over-the-top soccer field (with stadium lights!) in the lot just behind our back fence. Since the living room and bedroom windows look out on said back fence, I spend many weekday nights and most weekend mornings listening to grown men pace our property line, blowing whistles at children and yelling things so glaringly obvious (“Get after it!”) that I’m left wondering how much of their input is truly beneficial.
On game days, parents settle into camping chairs just behind our fence. Most offer appropriate, occasional calls of support, but there’s usually one especially ‘supportive’ father whose guttural battle cries continue, unabated, for an hour or two at a time.
This state of affairs prompted me – writing from the compromised quiet of my little writer’s lair not forty feet away – to come up with something in that guy’s honor. Mostly because I wanted to write something and couldn’t think of anything else for the duration of his hollering. The resulting song (or lyric, if you like) is…