tarar786
Age: 124
7947 days old here
Total Posts: 2636
Points: 0
Location:
China, China
I was watching some little kids play soccer. These kids were only five or six years old, but they were playing a real game - - a serious game _ two teams, complete with coaches, uniforms, and parents. I didn't know any of them, so I was able to enjoy the game without the distraction of being anxious about winning or losing - I wished the parents and coaches could have done the same.
The teams were pretty evenly matched. I will just call them Team One and Team Two. Nobody scored in the first period. The kids were hilarious. They were clumsy and terribly inefficient. They fell over their own feet, they stumbled over the ball, they kicked at
the ball and missed it but they didn't seem to care. They were having fun.
In the second quarter, the Team One coach pulled out what must have been his first team and put in the scrubs, except for his best player who now guarded the goal.
The game took a dramatic turn. I guess winning is important even when you're five years old -- because the Team Two coach left his best players in, and the Team One scrubs were no match for them. Team Two swarmed around the little guy who was now the Team One
goalie. He was an outstanding athlete, but he was no match for three or four who were also very good. Team Two began to score. The lone goalie gave it everything he had, recklessly throwing his body in front of incoming balls, trying valiantly to stop them.
Team Two scored two goals in quick succession. It infuriated the young boy. He became a raging maniac -- shouting, running, diving. With all the stamina he could muster, he covered the boy who now had the ball, but that boy kicked it to another boy twenty feet
away, and by the time he repositioned himself, it was too late -- they scored a third goal.
I soon learned who the goalie's parents were. They were nice, decent-looking people. I could tell that his dad had just come from the office -- he still had his suit and tie on. They yelled encouragement to their son.
I became totally absorbed, watching the boy on the field and his parents on the sidelines. After the third goal, the little kid changed. He could see it was no use; he couldn't stop them.
He didn't quit, but he became quietly desperate futility was written all over him. His father changed too. He had been urging his son to try harder - yelling advice and encouragement. But then he changed. He became anxious. He tried to say that it was okay - to hang in there. He grieved for the pain his son was feeling.
After the fourth goal, I knew what was going to happen. I've seen it before. The little boy needed help so badly, and there was no help to be had. He retrieved the ball from the net and handed to the referee - and then he cried. He just stood there while huge tears rolled down both cheeks. He went to his knees and put his fists to his eyes - and he cried the tears of the helpless and brokenhearted.
When the boy went to his knees, I saw the father start onto the field. His wife clutched his arm and said, "Jim, don't. You'll embarrass him." But he tore loose from her and ran onto the field. He wasn't supposed to - the game was still in progress. Suit, tie, dress shoes, and all - he charged onto the field, and he picked up his son so everybody would know that this was his boy, and he hugged him and held him and cried with him. I've never been so
proud of a man in my life.
He carried him off the field, and when he got close to the sidelines I heard him say, "Scotty, I'm so proud of you. You were great out there. I want everybody to know that you are my son." "Daddy," the boy sobbed, "I couldn't stop them. I tried, Daddy, I tried and tried, and they scored on me." "Scotty, it doesn't matter how many times they scored on you. You're my son, and I'm proud of you. I want you to go back out there and finish the game. I know you want to quit, but you can't. And, son, you're going to get scored on again, but it doesn't matter. Go on, now." It made a difference - I could tell it did.
When you're all alone, and you're getting scored on - and you can't stop them - it means a lot to know that it doesn't matter to those who love you. The little guy ran back on to the field - and they scored two more times - but it was okay.
I get scored on every day. I try so hard. I recklessly throw my body in every direction. I fume and rage. I struggle with temptation and sin with every ounce of my being - and Satan laughs. And he scores again, and the tears come, and I go to my knees - sinful, convicted, helpless.
And my Father - my Father rushes right out on the field - right in front of the whole crowd - the whole jeering, laughing world - and he picks me up, and he hugs me and he says, "John, I'm so proud of you. You were great out there. I want everybody to know that you
are my son, and because I control the outcome of this game, I declare you -- The Winner."
tarar786
Age: 124
7947 days old here
Total Posts: 2636
Points: 0
Location:
China, China
This short love story is an attempt to challenge the love story medium with unconventional characters and humour. It evolved from the Stella and Sortini love poem. Watch this space for more adventures.
short love story: Stella and Sortini, Urban Legends
Little is known for certain of the early days of Stella and her Sortini but within our small town a legend has passed from mouth to ear, perhaps via the brain, and back to mouth again in the form of a rumour. I'm not disparaging the town's folk at all when I say, they are mothers of invention. They have a tendency to gloss over real incidents and gossip about completely trivial affairs with a great deal of zealous verbosity. It's been argued that this reflects a certain cowardice on their part. That they desire to appear moral, and so require scapegoats, that they, however, lack the moral courage to go with their convictions and so tend to snipe mercilessly at the weak and harmless.
Now I hear you say, 'Weak and harmless? What has this to do with those nutters Stella and Sortini?' And well you may ask, but it has to be noted that this story did not begin to circulate until they were both dead, or at least most of the way there. It's hard to say with any degree of certainty how much Smiler contributed to this myth. It reeks of his input, but who knows? Perhaps Smiler had nothing to do with it, maybe it's all true, or based in truth? Though it does strike me as the type of story with which Smiler would while away an idle afternoon at The Jackal.
According to this legend Sortini was not even Italian. Sortini was in actual fact a Traveler. The myth has it that he'd managed to seduce and make pregnant altogether the wrong person's daughters, they were identical twins and quite unbeknownst to Sortini, or so it's said, were sharing him as their lover. All this emerged in some caravan or other, when Sortini, covered in his own blood, was trying to explain how he'd been duped.
'Yeah, okay, right, I went behind your back and probably shagged both your daughters.'
The Wrong Person roared in response, 'Went behind my back did you? Probably, probably, shagged both my daughters did you?' These questions were, of course, best left unanswered and were punctuated by blows of the most dire sort. The Wrong Person was not a young man these days but he still packed a substantial punch and had his two sons to help. They were holding Sortini up by his armpits, squeezing tightly, and were far from adverse from adding the odd jab to Sortini's ribs, for good measure. Anyone who knew Sortini knows it was pointless trying to bash him in the head, it was simply too hard, you could break a pool cue on it and achieve nothing more than angering him. However, his ribs were more or less those of an ordinary man.
It's The Wrong Person I feel the most sorrow for in all this. One shotgun wedding was feasible but how could Sortini conceivably marry the two girls at once? Of course, one of them would have to be married off to some useless buck-toothed article, there was all that to arrange too, what a headache! At his time in life, with everything else to manage, he didn't need this. To make matters worse the daughters had fallen out with each other and their family too. Each claimed that Sortini was her true and that her sister had blackmailed herself into allowing the liaison with Sortini. Each twin sang the same tune, 'She's a liar, and a jealous slag! She said if I didn't share him with her she'd tell you!'
All these events were unfolding in different parts of the field but each participant in the love triangle was aware of the shouts of the others. Each twin was held in a separate caravan but Mary managed to escape and made it to within two hundred yards of Sortini before being rugby tackled by her Aunt. From underneath her Aunt, Mary called out plaintively to him, 'Don't worry, we'll be together, just you see, we'll run away together.' She was only able to say this because her Aunt, knowing her to be pregnant, was treating her with kid gloves: she wasn't bouncing up and down on her and bore most of her considerable bulk on her legs and arms.
Both the twins were being subjected to the most heinous of interrogations as to the nature of their relations with Sortini. Their mother lead one posse of women, dealing with Ruth, and the trusted Aunt dealt with Mary. Every so often there would be a shuffling about of these matriarchs. The mother would tire of the impasse she'd reached with one daughter and lead her gaggle of women to the other caravan. There they'd exchange hostages and the Aunt and her gang would be left with their new charge. The twins would catch sight of each other at these times, this was no accident but intended by the matriarchs, and there would be terrible name-calling. The men beating Sortini would pause and listen intently to the catcalls. It's said Sortini winced more at the noise of them than he did under the blows of his captors but it's doubtful this is true.
The male members of the other families camped nearby watched all this with great amusement, while mothers not privileged to be directly involved used the whole event as a stern lesson for their young daughters. These same daughters who found it very exciting and even a little romantic but humoured their mothers with presences of self-righteous shock and touching naivete.
The story also goes that the young Sortini was a very handsome devil and there was an element of voyeurism in the interrogations at the hands of the women. When this and the last detail are taken into consideration you can see how the proliferation of this rumour can be attributed to Smiler.
Although such questions wouldn't get the job done the women also asked them anyway, 'How could you do that to your sister? Threaten her and steal her man? How come you got pregnant? Have you no shame? You tart!' This was said just as it had been to the sister before. Though Auntie and her women were far more interested in the specifics and actual mechanics of the whole thing, 'Where did you meet? How often? ...No, I mean how often did you do it when you met?'
Those poor girls, but their ordeal was as nothing compared to Sortini's. His guilt had been conclusively proven but that didn't abate the interrogation. The father wanted to know which of his two girls was the bad seed. Which had blackmailed the other, Ruth or Mary? The blackmailer would be married to whichever buck-toothed article would agree to the union, knowing, or not knowing, that she carried Sortini's child.
Sortini was continually drunk and simply couldn't tell the difference between the twins. He'd been like a pig in mud, he hadn't stopped to question the miracle of abundant sex.
For the first day of his interrogation he refused to say anything at all to the men. He remained defiant even when they despaired of scraping their knuckles on his head and let in his own Aunt to try to reason the truth out of him. By the time the second day of his questioning had ended, his mock execution was staged that day, his mind was so addled that it seemed any information it once contained might be lost permanently. He just kept repeating, over and over, 'Who are you? Got any drink?'
Unbeknownst to The Wrong Person, Sortini's Aunt had now busied herself organising a rescue attempt. Perhaps Sortini sensed this and was playing for time?
The Wrong Person decided to put the interrogation on hold until Sortini came to his senses. Sortini was locked in a horsebox and The Wrong Person's sons took turns guarding him. Word had also been sent to The Wrong Person's oldest and most terrible son, who would no doubt arrive soon and join the inquisition.
However, it's said Sortini's family arrived in the dead of night, his Aunt at their head, to rescue him. After that the matriarchal guard placed around The Wrong Person's daughters was doubled, all those scrawny women previously excluded suddenly found themselves with a purpose.
Meanwhile the scandal entered a new phase characterised by negotiations. Faced with another of his ilk, in the shape of Sortini's father, it seems that The Wrong Person did not actually consider Sortini too bad a match for either one of his daughters: as he explained to Sortini's father, 'Whoever he marries will be a lot better off than the other I marry to the first lame duck buck-toothed ba***** who'll agree.'
'At least with two pregnant daughters you know he's not firing blanks,' Sortini's father replied, less than tactfully, as was his wont.
'Ya f**king ba*****!' The Wrong Person's son Terrible had arrived by now. The Wrong Person also resented this inappropriate attempt at joviality but remained calm; merely saying, 'There's still the matter of honour.' He had a beady look in his eyes.
Sortini's one eyed father squinted at him inquisitively and stroked his sideburns as he replied, 'Honour?'
'Yes, there's been a slight, your son will have to fight my eldest, bare knuckled, usual rules.'
'What's the prize?'
'It's too important a matter for money, although they'll be a book.'
Sortini's father added, 'Undoubtedly they'll be wagers.'
'Yes, but the prize itself, if your son wins you can choose his bride, if my son wins, I choose.' The two fathers shook on it and agreed the fight should take place in two weeks, which was regarded as ample time for a man like Sortini to fully recover from the injuries so recently inflicted upon him. He was already walking about and asking for drink, though he had no idea who or where he was yet.
Sortini, once he regained some of his lost faculties, had different plans. Until he was blue in the face he protested, 'I don't want to marry anyone, I don't want to be a father!'
'You should have thought of that before you took your pants down son, there's no choice now, the family's gotten involved,' his father told him.
'I didn't ask to be rescued,' Sortini protested.
'Yes, but you were rescued anyway, stop your whining!'
'But look at the mother, Dad, and the Aunts,' Sortini stammered, 'they're all like elephants, and the father... I don't want to wake up every morning with either of those two, they're going to balloon just like all the others.'
'Yes, they'll balloon, you made them pregnant you idiot.' So, Sortini's pleading was to no avail.
His family ensured he was kept drunk so that he'd not be tempted to escape, they couldn't watch him all the time so they kept him well supplied with alcohol, which was tantamount to chaining him to the spot. If he didn't turn up at the fight and the wedding they'd lose a lot of face.
Eventually the momentous day of the fight and wedding rolled around. Everyone, except the tourists purely there to gawp, was dressed in their best clothes. The Wrong Person's twin daughters made an extra special effort and were still refusing to speak to each other, both insisted they'd be the one chosen by Sortini, who they blindly expected to win. All the women wore bonnets. There were flowers and alcohol everywhere and people had come from far and wide to see the spectacle.
Among the onlookers that day were also a lot of buck-toothed ba*****s. They were like cock-eyed sharks that had tasted the minutest drop of blood in the water and flocked to gawp at the young women. It was uncanny, as if they somehow knew that one of the twins would soon drop from the heavens into the arms of some lucky man of their unfortunate kind. The twins avoided direct eye contact with all of them, in the worst cases this simply wasn't physiologically possible anyway: so askew were they.
Sortini though had formulated a plan of his own. He had a loyal little kid he used to pass through open windows when he went out thieving, he sent this urchin off to Stella to arrange a meeting. He slipped away at the appointed time to meet her at a nearby Church. Stella was late and found him pacing in an aG**ated state.
He'd gathered every penny he could lay his hands on and gave it all to her before they even kissed. He was very jittery and Stella could tell something was wrong. 'Stella,' he said, with his usual frankness, 'I've messed up.'
Stella remained calm, more intrigued than concerned, 'What, darling, did you hit another policeman?'
Despite the gravity of the situation they both laughed, then they kissed passionately. They were in each other's arms, on the grass in the graveyard, hidden behind the tombstones, when he explained, 'It's worse than that, what I've done, I've got some women pregnant, there's to be a fight, then I'm to be married.'
'That's not so bad darling, you can still slip away to see me, no?'
'No, well, yes, but I don't want to be married, I don't want to be a father and have screaming kids, fat Aunts, a buck-toothed cock-eyed ba***** of a brother-in-law and a nagging wife and the wrong person for a horrible father.'
'Oh dear, then we'll elope!' Stella was very excited now, she had always liked the idea of eloping, ever since she was a kid. It was all a game to her, this affair with Sortini. 'Yes, we'll elope later, but first I've got a plan for us to run away together. I need your help.' Stella didn't say anything, she just grinned, which was as good or better than her actually saying yes: since sometimes she said yes when she meant no (and vice-versa).
Sortini explained his situation and his plan in detail. He was to make a good show of the fight, for his family and for the sheer pleasure of thumping Terrible, but he was going to do what would have previously been unthinkable: he was going to lose. He wanted Stella to take the money and bet it all against himself at the last minute, on the actual day, her presence at the fight was vital. With ten days to go before the fight he was going to give up drinking and go into serious training so as to considerably increase the odds on a bet against his victory.
He would deliberately allow himself to be knocked unconscious, he intended to head-butt his opponent's best punch to ensure he would be. At that point, he speculated, he'd be dragged off, locked back in the horsebox and left alone. Stella was to steal a car and hitch the horsebox to it, then he'd be free. Stella listened to the plan eagerly and thought it devilishly cunning and exciting, she'd seen lots of people steal and drive cars and it didn't look too difficult. She readily agreed. 'Look on the bright side,' she said, 'at least if the plan fails we'll have a car, a horsebox and a lot of money.' Sortini merely squinted at her quizzically and then they made love.
As Sortini had anticipated, nobody questioned the presence of the stranger Stella, in her best floral dress, at the fight come wedding. She presented an odd character though: she was almost crane like, skinny in her build, especially in the legs, she seemed to strut through the mud with a very birdlike gait, like she was born to paddle in it, her shoes plastered in the stuff and her dress flapping in the wind. She drew plenty of stares, she was used to that, being six feet tall and so crane-like in her movements. Everyone assumed she was a sister of one of the buck-toothed suitors come to check out the twins.
She had arrived early but soon forgot all about everything, how she loved a wedding! She couldn't resist entering into the spirit of things. She went about chatting with people and soon found herself among the entourage surrounding the twins, hobnobbing, much to Sortini's terror, with the would-be relatives and discussing the merits of the two fighters. 'Ah, he's good,' The Wrong Person told her, 'but not as good as my son.' She was introduced to Terrible and shook hands with him. 'How gentle you are for such a strong man,' she thought to herself, 'why, you remind me of my beau.' At that point she suddenly awoke to her purpose and remembered it was her job to ensure there wasn't going to be any wedding. She got The Wrong Person to explain the betting system to her and touched him deeply when she said she wished to put all her money on his son. He even placed the bet for her.
That's when she saw Sortini, for the first time in ten days, for the first time ever off the drink. How wonderful he looked, shirtless, his battle-scarred hide revealed to all and his thick black hair greased back in preparation for the fight. She climbed atop a car like it was her own, which it soon would be, for a better look. She forgot herself again and waved at him. He looked away from her indiscretion, he was terrified! A small group of buck-toothed suitors gathered about the car and started to look up her dress. It's said, almost certainly by Smiler this, that she never wore underwear.
The fight began and lasted round after round. Stella felt every blow that landed on Sortini in her soul, but he was giving as good as he got and Stella started to wonder if he hadn't forgotten his own plan, 'You sweet daft plonker,' she thought. Eventually, by this time she'd lost count of the rounds, Sortini's head butt landed and he was dragged off. From her vantage point she could see him being deposited in the horsebox. Everything was running like clockwork. She was helped down from the roof of the car by an eager throng of buck-toothed individuals gathered below.
When the suitors saw her in difficulties with her car there were plenty of volunteer helpers. Stella picked the least cock-eyed as her driver and there were others eager to hitch the horsebox up for her. It was as if some instinct told them that two maidens were going to fall from the heavens into the arms of two lucky buck-toothed articles that fateful day.
This, so it is said, is the reason why Sortini largely remained indoors and was so incoherent for the rest of his life: he wasn't really Italian at all, but a Traveler hiding out from two families. I think it's likely this whole story is an invention on the part of Smiler, with more than a little help from the Italian community: keen to cleanse their lineage of Sortini post-mortem.
MERI DOSTI MERA PYAR