The cold.

For the last week or so Brett has been telling me of his sickness, his highly contagious sickness that is commonly referred to as the common cold. Despite seeing him every day, I haven’t yet contracted his cold, but it was just the other day when we were talking about general things and Brett said that you are more likely to catch someone’s contagious disease by shaking their hand than by kissing them or something like that. I then put my hand out to shake Brett’s hand, just to see if it was true. Although this test isn’t really an actual test, like I could have caught his cold just by being around him or by being in the vicinity of his sneezes or maybe the cold that I would catch wouldn’t even be his, but regardless, we shook hands, potentially spreading the common cold that Brett had.

***

When the rain started falling on the corrugated iron roof, it was falling heavier than anything that has ever fallen before. The rain was so heavy that the sound of the ball bouncing and being kicked couldn’t be heard over the sound of the rain coming down hard on the roof. We were up by a single goal, and it felt like the end of a movie or the final boss of a video game where it starts to rain and you know that it is serious. All I could think about was my ‘to do list’ and scoring the goal so I could just go back and defend and never have to worry about scoring ever, ever again. There were four minutes left on the clock and it was the final half; we were playing on the blue court, the court that we have never won on, ever. Jack took the shot which deflected off the keeper and went out for a corner, and from my defensive position that I have been cemented in for the entirety of my indoor playing life, I came out to the other half, ready to shoot.

Whenever I came into the other half; the attacking half, I always felt out of place. I am a defender, but I am not the kind of defender that will go into the other half, ever. I feel uncomfortable going into attacking territory when I know that the defence is where I am meant to be. Regardless of how uncomfortable I felt, I made my way to the attacking half of the court, and where I was placed in that half was amazing. There was a clear cut path from where Brett was taking the corner and where I was standing, and before I could call out for the pass, Brett had already passed it straight to me, and from there I kicked it straight into the goals, it went past the keeper and went over the line... well at least I thought it went over the line, apparently it didn’t.

I have never been so sure in my life of a ball crossing a line but apparently I was wrong. The keeper picked it up just before it went over the line, in my eyes he picked it up after but in the refs it didn’t; absolutely devastating. I yelled out that it was a goal, and the ref shook his head and I yelled out something along the lines of ‘fuck off’ and by that I mean, that is exactly what I yelled. It was by far the angriest I have ever been, ever I think. Maybe not ever, but I was so angry. I yelled so loud that it could be heard over the rain, and then the rain got heavier. In my rage I ended up hacking at one of their players and then hacking at a second, like, they were obvious frees and I felt bad for just kicking their legs out deliberately but the ref seemed to show a blind eye to it, kind of like my goal. They ended up scoring another goal, equalising to five all and then within the last thirty seconds, they scored again with this miracle header that was just, no I was so sad.

Luckily enough, the other team was disqualified for using a player that they were told not to use. See, Sealio FC, as in our team is in C grade, and the player that they used was like, the best A grade player that there is. Because they were told not to use him by the two ‘in charge’ people at Life Be In It, we ended up winning ten nil by default. When you think about it though, we nearly beat a team using the best indoor player at the thingy, so that is just fucking great. We left Immanuel High School feeling fucking awesome, I mean if I score I would have felt much, much more awesome but you know, we played fucking great. The rain wasn’t as heavy walking to the car, but it was a great, light rain to cool us down after sweating that hot ass flood that came from our heads.

***

When I got home I really needed to blow my nose, for like, the seven thousandth time. I have a cold; I can’t take a breath without sniffing up the snot that is running down from my nose. This is what I don’t know though; did I get this cold from shaking Brett’s hand? I will never know, so I don’t know why I am even thinking this. I mean I have seen Brett every day since I first shook his hand, so did I get the cold from shaking his hand, by being around him and his sneezes, or did I get it from being in the rain? Not only will I never know, but I really don’t care, so I think that this is the point where I stop writing and just... stop.