Respect is good, but latinum's better.
I was coaching a soccer game last week and something happened that has stuck with me enough to kick-start my long-neglected blog. (Just don't expect this to become a habit again.) Okay, so the other team was leading 1-0. But that's not the thing that happened. This is what it feels like when doves cry. When your opponent scores first, things get tense. Your players on the field get anxious and start fouling more. On the sideline, your players on the bench start grousing more and want to tell the referee what to do. And you, the coach, yell a lot more, as if anyone on the field can actually hear what you're saying. There's this burden that wasn't there just a moment before: a weight on your shoulders or a wall to climb or a monkey on your back, and with every minute that passes without a reciprocal goal, the weight gets heavier and the wall gets taller and the monkey gets angrier. One of the opposing team's captains was this bigger kid whose mere presen