Was depressed yesterday and thought that perhaps going to a Cal Women’s Soccer match might help. The way I was feeling it couldn’t hurt. I needed to get out of the house, walk and spend some time in the great outdoors.
There were a surprising number of people in attendance, I’d guess several thousand. Many of them were Cal students only just arrived in town as classes start this week. Many of those Cal students seemed to be freshmen and probably the majority of those lived in a dorm. Thus many were of short acquaintance. College freshmen travel in small packs, especially the females. They cling to each other — figuratively — because they are otherwise alone in a foreign setting taking on a new challenge. For the most part they’ve spent their lives in the security of a family. There is both excitement and fear in the college freshmen experience. For me it was all excitement as I was getting away from my mentally ill mother.
A lot of the attendees were girls making the transition to womanhood both in age and experience. I found most of them incredibly cute in the way eighteen-year-old females are, without sexualizing them (I am after all many decades their senior and not a creep).
It called to mind my freshman year in college and how delighted I was to be surrounded by so many girls who were unencumbered by parents and their rules. Heady times indeed.
Some of the students there were not freshmen and many were re-uniting with old friends after a summer break. Actually it was longer than that for most the virus having made a shambles of in-person education last year.
As is no doubt already evident I was doing a lot of people watching. Then again a lot of people there — maybe most — were not focusing their attention on the action on the field. Chatting was the order of the day.
There were also a fair amount of parents with small children. A free college soccer game is a good place to take a child whose lack of attention for the game is not going to make one regret plunking down money for a ticket.
It was a good match and a surprising one as the plucky Bears held Santa Clara, the number two ranked team in the nation, to a one-all draw.
It also made me miss my coaching days. Coaching the school soccer team at the middle school where I taught was one of the few unqualified successes of my life. I like to think that parenting and being an uncle are two others.
By the time I walked home, the depression had faded. It works that way sometime. Occasionally you can chase the blues away by managing to do something. Thank goodness for that.
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