:My brother, a redoubtable soccer player
In this chapter I become a little more detailed. In other chapters I give more metaphors and I am more specific about people and places.--

Fights during soccer games were very common; even during playoffs a clash can start for any unsuspected reason. In this part of the world, soccer is called football the same as it is called in Europe; actually, it makes more sense than calling the game soccer since you spend most of your time kicking and controlling the ball with your feet. With that said, football is a very competitive sport, with neither side wanting to loose, the ethics of the game sometimes goes out the window. At times certain players used excessive force in fear of loosing the game. Now if there was an obvious age difference between them, the older players would not accept defeat and would use force to their advantage. My brother Lionel is acquainted with situations like that because he was a victim of angry players’ brutality several times. Lionel was one of the best soccer players in the neighborhood. Once he has the ball you can almost be certain he will mark a goal, unless he is brutally taken down during his skilled course to the adversary goal area. Among the multiple incidents that he was victim of, there is one that I can’t remove from my memory.

One night there was a football game in the national stadium and back in those days we had to wait for the official game to be over and the parking lot to be emptied before we can start our own game. Now, do you remember that 80 by 50 feet concrete space in the parking lot I told you about earlier? This particular incident took place there. After the official game my friends and I took over that space even before the last car left the lot. As people were craving for football games some people leaving the stadium gathered in that lot for an additional spectacle, for free. It was around 11: 00 PM. After a few minutes of running, kicking, blocking, pushing and yelling, my team was loosing 4 to 1, I was very nervous.

I was an average soccer player, indeed most of the time I was the last picked during the formation of the teams, because they just could not leave me out. I wasn’t that bad, it just more players were better than I was. I was known as a midfielder which is probably the most hard-working position in football. Midfielders play both offense and defense, and at the same time are the link between the offense and the defense. I was a confident midfielder. However, my problem was I wasn’t a good forward like offense players are called, and in soccer if you can mark goals people will like you even if you are the worst player; if you can’t or don’t, you may be barely remembered.

So that night my teammates were not doing good, suddenly my brother appeared among the spectators and I cried: “Lionel come replace me!” Believe me, the game changed immediately after Lionel touched the ball. The focus was on him from then on because Lionel was an excellent forward, so much so the opponents had to assign two defenders to watch him, and everyone would rush toward him when he had the ball. In a few minutes my team was leading 6 to 4. In times like this you never know when the game would end. Not all the rules are reinforced because there are no referees. Which ever team reaches 10 goals first is the winner no matter how long the game takes. My team got a lot of supporters, not only were we younger than most of our opponents but we were now leading. I could not stay still, I was clapping, screaming, cheering on my brother. The people were to cheering and clapping: “Lionel, Lionel, Lionel, Lionel”, I was like: “Yesss, he’s my brother, my big brother”, “Lionel show them what you can do!”

When Lionel had the ball, he had his way of putting his left hand behind him and his right hand would hang in the front with his index points to the sky, maybe he had a better equilibrium that way or he was just silly. It was in that manner Lionel would dribbled, flicked and tricked 3 to 4 opponents and marked the goal. Lionel had fun doing that, and he liked the attention too. It’s in the human nature to like attention. With that game he had all the attention and he wanted to keep it; that was his night of fame. But with fame comes a price, you make enemies too. There was this one big and older guy on the adversary team who did not like it at all. I could smell it; I could see his bad spirit on his aura. He decided to go after Lionel. Lionel had full control of the ball for about 50 seconds. From the right side of the field he managed to cross over to the left side, a new goal was on the way, people were hysterical. That big guy new he could stop Lionel from reaching his penalty area. Lionel dribbled him once and instead of going forward he came back with the ball and dribbled the guy a second time. That boy enjoys playing with fire. Lionel stopped and waited for the guy to reach him so he can flick and trick the guy a third time. He shaped to pass to the right, flicked the ball between his legs, and turn to the other side. Controlling the ball with such elegance he pulled the wool over his opponent eyes. The big guy missed the ball and Lionel as fast as a tiger followed the trajectory of the ball. Lionel passed, I don’t know how he did it but that an easy and usual thing for him to do. As Lionel jump-passed or almost passed to get the ball victoriously under the acclamation of the crowd, the big guy decided to stop my brother since he missed the ball again. While my brother was still in the air after leaping like an Olympic hurdle winner, the guy tackled his feet and Lionel went from a vertical to a horizontal position while still in the air, and crashed on his face, on the concrete. He could not avoid nor lighten the impact because as you can picture it, his left hand was probably still on his back, over his hips. I closed my eyes as people rushed toward him, immobilized and on the concrete floor, in pains. He stayed on the floor without moving until they grabbed him. When I finally find my way through the crowd and saw him, I almost passed out. His shirt was all bloody and blood dripped from his mouth. If it was in the United States at this time, dozen of cell phones would have dialed the emergency number. The guy would have been arrested for assault on an innocent skilled soccer player, with the deadly weapon that he transformed his gorilla foot into. Lionel was lucky, he had only one cut on his chin, as for the blood from his mouth I don’t know where it came from; and people quickly applied ice on his chin and mouth. The game had stopped and did not resume. When my brother felt better he put his hand around my neck, using me as a crutch, as I hopped him home. It’s was almost midnight.

As we were going home, two blocks away, I was brainstorming: How do I avoid him to get beating if my mom finds out what happened? And as she would probably find out I was there too, I would also get my fraction of the beating. I suspected that my mom was probably sleeping at that time since she was not looking for us, and because a lot of people were still outside, she probably thought we were in front of the door. The dilemma then was to explain how my brother got that cut on his chin when she eventually sees him…and eureka! I took the bloody shirt from my brother and threw it in the sewer hole across the street so my mom would never see it again, that was part one of my plan. The rest of the plan sounded machiavellian, coming from a kid.

My brother and I used to share a full size bed. He got to be in the front because he was older, but I always wanted to be in the front because of the cold wall at night. Furthermore there used to be a two piece wooden table near our bed, actually part of table’s facade (top) was over the bed were my brother’s feet laid. There was a problem with that table. Sometimes in the middle of the night when my brother is dreaming, maybe about football, he would kick the surface of the table and the table would fell on its side. My mom used to disgust that, yet she would not move the table because of space limitation, and my brother would not give up his privileged spot. That night after I trashed his shirt to save his butt from getting beat up with a belt, I told him: Mom is probably sleeping, I am going first to survey the place if everything is fine you will come in after me and we will proceed to part 3 of the plan, if not I’ll tell her you are in the bathroom and will wait until she falls asleep before we pass to part 3.

Part three of the plan was to crash the table after a few minutes we were in bed and expecting, since my mom was used to that, she would not come to glimpse what happened and the plan would go on. Luck was on our side that night, when I got home the house was dark, everybody but us was sleeping. I did not turn on any light. I went to bed waling silently like a cat, my brother followed and after a few minutes in bed I pushed the table with my hand and crashed it on its side. My mom in the other room yelled: “Lionel! What’s wrong with you? I quickly reply: don’t worry mom we will fix it in the morning. She moaned some obnoxious phases, like someone who is pissed but the plan was working; she did not come to the room.

My brother slept; the poor boy was in pain, but me, I barely slept, I was waiting for part four of the plan. At 6:00 AM I heard my mom moving in her room and I screamed: “My God! Lionel what’s wrong with your face? My mom rapidly came to the room, “what’s wrong with his face? Oh, God! What did you do to your face? Lionel answered he fell with the table during the night. “And you did not call me, why are you so dumb? You could have died without anyone knowing with a swelling face like this… from now on you sleep in the back and Roro in the front. I should have done that long time ago” she added. Subsequently my mom applied some antiseptic cream on the wounds that healed surprisingly fast. My mom never knew what exactly happened that night until this day.

My brother was certainly grateful to me for avoiding him an unnecessary beating however if he is not, it’s OK because my plan gave me what I always wanted, sleep in the front of the bed which gave me a false impression of being older. And guess what I never kicked the table myself; I found a trick: every night before I went to bed I just moved the table away from the bed. I knew I may not be able to control what I do in my dreams and I wanted to keep my front spot. We changed homes and beds and I kept the front bed until we got our own detached bed when I turned sixteen.