My son Tony then told me that he was interested in the tournament and that he wanted to watch some of the matches. And so I put the World Cup app on his phone. This interest of his seemingly came out of the blue. I hadn't planned on even mentioning to him that the tournament was taking place. Where this interest came from I can only conjecture. Was it his classmates? A teacher at school or at his numerous after-school places?
When I was Tony's age, I remember watching the coverage on the 1974 World Cup. 1974 was the second year that I was into sports. This interest was the result, I recall, from my father buying me a Toronto Maple Leafs table hockey game for Christmas in 1972. It was his attempt to turn me into a Leafs fan. It quickly failed because I instead became enamoured with the Montreal Canadiens. I watched a lot of their 1973 Stanley Cup run although I have distinct memories of being forced to go to bed early on the night they clinched the cup. Anyway, the point of that digression is that on my own, I developed my own sports interests. And Tony has done the same, though I wonder if actually watching a Kickball* match would bore him.
In the World Cup, I will be cheering for Poland; the Poland that I imagine is reactionary and Catholic. You can click here to see for whom Tony will be cheering.
*It is from David Warren that I call that sport, being played in the World Cup, Kickball. I don't like calling it soccer because that word is gay, and I don't call it football because the Americans already have a sport called Football. I wouldn't want to argue with some Football players about the semantics or syntax of their calling their sport Football because most of them are two or three times as big as Kickball players.
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