Germany is out of the World Cup tournament, which is a matter of some interest to the German princesses that I live with.

Our daughter, in particular is enjoying the tournament, although sometimes I suspect that she is more interested in avoiding chores than in watching the actual games. But she is learning about soccer, which is good because she didn’t have the opportunity to play youth soccer, unlike most of the other kids in the town where we live.  Of course, youth soccer bears the same relationship to professional soccer that T-ball bears to professional auto racing, so her lack of experience hasn’t diminished her appreciation for the game.

These low-scoring games are pretty intense, which is part of the appeal.  I can understand, though, that some people might prefer a higher-scoring, faster-paced contest.  I guess that’s why they invented hockey (…Eh, what if we make the field smaller, flood it, freeze it, put the players on skates, give them sticks because some of them don’t skate that well, and instead of that clunky ball we’ll use a hard plastic disk that no one can actually see… That ought to speed things up… But we’ll need better dental insurance.”)

June 27, 2018