penalty kick

dinner at howard & ann's, a mid-evening bowl of frosted flakes

On a soccer team, a very mixed bag of guys. Some my age, several much younger and smaller. The field we're scrimmaging at is very dry & dusty, a white clay mess with little grass to speak of. At one point, my team is taking multiple shots, the defenders scrabbling to keep us out. The ball goes out the back and we get a corner kick, except we take it from the point where the box intersects the back boundary. I chip it beautifully into the center, and someone says something about my ability to drop it just right. Our score is imminent, but one of the opposing players punches the ball away with his fist. It's one of two of the really small guys that have stripped (naked? not sure. not the point.) and caked themselves with clay like tribal warriors. I protest his obvious and egregious foul, and whoever is ref agrees to give me a penalty kick. All the guys crowd around the box, but then leave and go into a house, the field comes right up to it. I can look through a sliding glass door and see them all sitting on wooden bleachers. I'm still trying to get my free kick up and going, but I can't figure out where to put the ball. The field has changed from hard, dusty clay to a tiled surface, kind of like an old dropped ceiling. I know where I feel like the ball should be placed, but people seem to be pressuring me to set it much, much further back. I dither.

I ask the coach (who seems to switch between the PE coach from midschool & Lane McIntyre) where he wants me to set up, he asks how someone like ME could get a penalty kick so far BACK. I explain the situation with the hands call on the other team. He asks which player used hands, I point to the two guys sitting inside, but I don't know which one it was. He says okay. I still think the ball is terribly far back (in reality, it would be between the circle and the box, twice as far as it should be). But i'm still confident. The keeper loses focus, moves to one side, I punch it right down the middle. Score.

I go inside, there are several young women in prom dresses, sitting in folding chairs, laughing about "he's not the father." I do a quick stand up, say that those are the words that always make me feel happy. I'm not certain if they realize that that makes no good sense, or not.