I see ‘em!

Hi! A new season of EPL has begun and guess everone’s bit quiet cos the only ones who wanted to boast (Man Utd fans) haven’t much to say with the recent run of results. The rest are just shocked at the strange results of the past weeks too (England winning?! Owen not injured? Fantasy football?)

Here’s a positively insannnnne picture to make this post more interesting. Appetiser.

 

Freekick!

Regardless of the silence, here’s a strange little tale I’d like to share with ya. Since if you do play soccer, whether it be with me or otherwise, it will concern you.

If you have been in contact with me, you would know that other than Sunday soccer, I also play at my place Castle Green on Wednesdays and/or Thursdays, in the evening. Since this all began, which was a year plus ago, I have been refering to the wed and thurs crowd to be ‘uncles’ - the name we give to those who basically cannot run and complain alot.

The wednesday bunch I always refer to as ‘the working uncles’, while the thursday bunch are the ‘China uncles’.

The incident that happened this thursday was with the China uncles.

Hitherto, my games with them have been a pleasure because I have a willingness to run (which basically means we will win - whoever has a running player will usually win). Uncle football - static football, haha. Anyways,  it was after a most fruitfull (goal-scoring-wise) match that I sat down with the core bunch of 6-7 of them. I was in my most comfortable ‘home-clothes attire’ which is my Hwa Chong top and was stretching when one of the ‘uncles’ asked me,

<translated from Mandarin>

‘You from Chinese High ah?’

‘Yes’ I looked at my top.

I was glad that they were actually talking to me because I often was quite quiet during the matches, quite the opposite when I’m with you guys right (play soccer with me and you’ll really know me)? haha right. Anyways, it was nice small talk and I felt like a nice little boy who was appreciated by tender loving elderly uncles. They were a close-knit gang of jokers and I enjoyed seeing them each week.

His reply:

‘Haha, we all also.’

I was astonished.

I looked at them, one was quite balding (like some China wushu exponent that came out of the mountain cave, another looked like the crafty guy from Shaolin Kungfu who hid the spanner and miscellaneous killing equipment in his pants while playing against Stephen Chow’s ‘monk’ team (i.e. he was nerdy, tallish and wore specs - hey sounds like someone I know well. Very well.), and other very china-looking fellows which I’ll not type more to describe in case I become some sort of discriminator-of-stereotype-perpetuator.

‘Oh, then how old are you all?’

‘28-29. Old men.’

I was doubly astonished. In case you don’t know, that’s 3 years older than me. Balding!? Running like Kieran Richardson?! Bellies!

I can’t remember some of the other inconsequential things I said as I was quite astonished.

‘Hey, then It could be that you are my direct seniors, I was in sec 1 while you all were sec 4.’

‘Ya, true! Haha. We used to play at the side field, kicking Chatek etc.’

I was triply astonished! Chatek. Lao Fu (the old and infamous disciplinarian), they began reminescing, laughing at each other about the good ole times. It was nice seeing these people that I thought uncles horsing around, childish (hey just like my sunday soccer bunch haha).

I felt really happy for these fellows, friends of over 15 years, still meeting up, real buddies, having seen each other when they were still boys, witnessing each other become men, get girlfriends, get married, get children, get hair-loss…

It makes me triply appreciate of my old friends. If you have some of these buddies in life, you know you are blessed with some precious treasure, real fragile and precious, precious and fragile like a thinly-worn meniscus. (did I spell it right?)

Here is what left me (pardon the nerd-speak) quadruply surprised.

‘Hahaha, so all of you, what class were you from?’

It had to be.

‘oh, 4M.’

My goodness me. M! M! M!

Heaven can’t script it better.

If you wrote it in a book, no one would believe you. But real life doesn’t have to be believable does it?

So for all of you whom have ‘brothers’, be thankful. For those of you who don’t have (or have sisters) go find out who are these ‘brothers’ in your life. Find them, and get them close (as close as a two-footed sliding tackle). Appreciate them.

Well you 4Mers, will we be uncles some day? Probably (or are we already?) Well hope that we will see each other through all of life’s ‘getting married’, ‘getting a kid’, ‘getting a screw put into the knee operation’. Whether we are uncles, or school boys, we will be that together eh?

Well buddies, I love ya all. May 4M live forever in us.

The Final Examination Question before graduating from the University of Soccer:  Is it more insane to play soccer in graduation gowns or to challenge the insane people who are wearing these gowns?

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2007 at 11:44 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.