Soccer….Family Style

It’s true. Every parent dreads that moment when your child grows up enough to start asking about the serious stuff in the world. And today, it happened to me. We were driving home from the US vs Mexico game, and my 4 year old son had already passed out. I was chatting with my almost 9 year old daughter about the game, and how excited I was to watch Klinsman coach for the first time because I was a huge fan of his as a player. But as I was chattering away, the back seat got quiet. You could almost feel the air get heavy as my daughter dropped the big question:

“Momma, why did Mexico have so many more fans than we did?”

Kaboom! The sex talk?….no problem. That was a piece of cake compared to this one. My kids grow up in an alternate universe, where most of their parents friends travel to several games a year. They know that we go to every World Cup. We discuss soccer constantly at home. How could I tell her? My sweet, innocent girl, that her beloved America isn’t always like that. That people all over the world are as passionate as we are about soccer, but in our country, most people aren’t really that into it.

So we had “the talk.” About immigration and assimilation (or non-assimilation) into a culture, and how the US is still growing it’s soccer community, and that’s why Mom and Dad volunteer with American Outlaws and Free Beer Movement to try to bring new fans into US Soccer. It was pretty touching. She handled it well. And another parenting milestone goes into the books.