One of the lesser known Dyscalculia Happy Fun Features is that we often struggle with sports. We can’t remember rules, or plays, or what side of the field we’re supposed to be on. While it’s been years since my last gym class, THANK THE GODS, I recently encountered this again when watching a World Cup game.
I’m from that generation of kids who grew up playing soccer (I was terrible, thank you). Thanks to us, and to succeeding generations, we are finally able to get the occasional World Cup game on broadcast TV in this country. When I watched the USA v. England game last weekend, I realized that I got the teams horribly confused after the first half. I mean, USA was in dark blue, and England was in white, so you’d think I’d be able to tell the teams apart, but no …
I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that the teams had switched sides at the half, even though I played the game myself so I know this is going to happen. So I found myself cheering when the ball was on the USA’s side of the field, and swearing when it was on England’s side, and then saying “– wait — dammit!” and reversing my verbal course. (If you don’t live under a rock, you probably know that the two teams played to a draw, which is a pretty good outcome for the US).
For some reason, this wasn’t an issue for me when I played soccer. I was offsides a lot, and I never knew where the hell the ball was, but at least I knew where my own goal was. I think it’s because the kick-off starts with everybody facing a certain way, and all my team mates had the same color jerseys as me, and I knew who they were because they were the ones yelling at me for being offsides. Them, and the refs. I wound up switching to swimming, a sport where there is no ball, no offsides, no play book, and very VERY simple rules. My soccer team mates thanked me.
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