Anderson University

Friday night was dreary and rain-soaked.  It was the end to a busy and somewhat stressful week and personally, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and just plain awkward.  You know when there’s something so stressful in your life that it occupies every conscious thought so that in your preoccupation you just feel inept at everything you do?  Well, that was me.  I tried to enjoy Fall Into Dance, a student choreographed dance production showing on campus that night…zoned out.  I tried watching a few episodes of The Office…the laughs were forced.  I even tried a little guitar hero with my roommate Brad…the star power just wasn’t rockin’ for me.  He pounded the bass line like a pro and I choked the lead riffs like a scrub.  It just wasn’t my night, or rather my week.  

After dropping my friend back at her hall, I headed back to the apartment to sleep off my weirdness.  Just as I rounded the corner off of 5^th onto the newly paved Chestnut, I spotted my friends Jackie, Amanda, Adam, Keith, Brad and company waving from the sidewalk.  With a screech and lurch of my Camry, I stopped at the intersection and rolled down my window.  

“Hey Joey, you wanna play some street soccer?” 

“Heck yeah I do!” 

So I rolled the Toyota into the first parking space hopped out of the car to join the posse already congregating in the middle of 5th street.  We split teams quickly and for two goals we placed a coiled Hartung Hall hose on one sidewalk and on the opposite sidewalk Adam’s Rocket Dog shoes.  In the cold and slippery street, with a few interruptions from passing cars and campus police, we played 4 on 4 until four in the morning.  It was glorious!  After a stressful week and an awkward night, street soccer was just what I needed to bring me back to normal.  

The moral of this story: sometimes life’s stresses overwhelm our thoughts and cause us to feel abnormal, and perhaps all it takes is something spontaneous like an early morning game of street soccer to bring us back to our balanced selves.

Cheers to spontaneity,

Joey