Small soccer players help light up Brewer field

They turned on the lights at Doyle Field one night not so long ago. They did it for second- and third-graders. And they may not have known it at the time, but they also did it for the parents.

It was the final night for the Brewer Parks and Rec soccer program and the kids were treated to something special. After weeks of giving up their Saturday morning routine of “Arthur,” “Rugrats” and “The Powerpuff Girls” to play soccer, the kids were treated to a night game under the lights at Doyle Field. It’s something special for them, not only because the lights are on but also because the kids were introduced over the public address system.

The night lights are a magnet, and the kids came running to the field from every direction. Down the hill from the gymnasium parking lot. Down the hill from the stadium parking lot. And when they hit the field they kept right on running. Chasing a ball. Chasing each other.

We grown-ups were chasing something, too. We were chasing our youth, a little. We don’t like admitting it, but we live through our children.

When our child hits the right couple of notes in succession during piano practice or scores a goal during Saturday morning soccer, it is a victory for the parent. The grandparents will hear about it and co-workers will suddenly have a need to go to the water cooler or restroom when we bring up our kid’s latest exploit for the 20th time.

We have to talk about it. It’s a law or something.

Water cooler talk – “Will you get a load of that guy. He just won’t shut up about his kid.”

“I know. It’s disgusting, isn’t it?”

We grown-ups stand around at these events, mostly passing idle chatter. We talk about our kids’ teachers. We talk about the Red Sox, the Patriots. We ask polite questions about the person’s spouse. And we do this while covertly never allowing our child out of our sight. Not for a second. We never see the eyes of the person we are talking to. We are good at this. It is a technique we have mastered through hundreds of functions.

We also spend much of this time measuring our child against the others in the group. We are told that so-and-so is a great little player. We acknowledge this while watching the kid run rings around ours and blurt out that our child is reading at a fourth-grade level.

And we are not being jerks when we do this. We are being parents. Despite our personal allegiances, most of us care about the other kids, too. We want them to live happy lives. Have happy thoughts. Have fun.

We were kids once ourselves. Back when JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Ford or Carter was president, we may have had our own Saturday morning soccer, or Little League baseball. We just didn’t have the “Powerpuff Girls” or “SpongeBob SquarePants.” We had “Deputy Dawg” and “Speedy Gonzalez.”

We know about all the stuff to come. We’ve seen the movie. We know about English tests, being grounded, using Stridex. We know that everybody, but everybody, will be there. And we know that stuff is still far enough away that the kids should have some fun in the meantime.

That’s why when they turned the lights on at Doyle Field the other night, it was so special. Six teams were there – USA, Cameroon, Norway, Greece, Morocco and Italy. All Brewer-area kids with a jump-start on geography classes. Some may have taken the time to find their country on a map.

As we parents stood talking, a woman with enough courage to brave her way through a minefield of pronunciations began announcing the kids’ names, one team after another. Each child ran out onto the field, most of them smiling from ear to ear.

And after playing the American national anthem (not sure if Cameroon’s was available), the kids began that thing they do. Sideline to sideline, two games of soccer were played simultaneously. The children on both playing fields immediately formed a circle around the ball and closed in on it. Then they ran around in this round-shaped group wherever the ball took them.

Every now and then “so-and-so” (because he really was as good as you had been told) would break out of the circle and score a goal.

“We won. The coaches say they don’t keep score but we do,” a blond-haired, blue-eyed cutie later confided.

But for the most part, they simply ran around in that circle swarming around the ball – some treating it as a game and really trying to kick the ball and some treating it as a social event.

Under the lights. Their laughter. Kids. Lighting up the night.

Fireflies.

Don Perryman can be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600 or at dperryman@bangordailynews.net.