Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Soccer

Melissa and I were sitting on a bench in a large tiled median. There were about 20 benches, all about 10 feet apart, most of them with people. Several boys were playing soccer with a plastic bottle, using a gap between two benches as the goal. People would walk through the game, and everyone would nearly collide, but no one seemed to mind, much like walking the sidewalks and streets everywhere else in Fes. At one point a homeless person sat behind their goal and kicked the bottle away when it hit his foot so the boys changed goals.

The boys would scream next to people sitting silently and the people would react as if they heard nothing, or the boys would run into traffic to chase the bottle and the cars would sort of stop and honk, or the bottle would whiz by someone, and the boys would occasionally get yelled at. Then the bottle hit a clean cut elderly man sitting by himself. He methodically leaned over, picked it up, twisted off the top, set it back on the ground, and stomped on the bottle about six times, silently, staring at the boys the whole time. The boys found another bottle. It was not readily apparent if they made any special effort to avoid Grumps McGee. After a few minutes he got up and left.

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