Senior Soccer

If a senior playing soccer needs a team to cheer him on,

then the cheer team needs a t-shirt to be noticed, thereupon,
the cheerers must make t-shirts with a Z to stand for Zacko,
thus the t-shirts are now Z-shirts and become distinctly whacko
which is worse when grouped in bleachers screaming loudly all together
til the player gets distracted and begins to wonder whether
he was wrong to call this gathering and wishes for cessation.
And the cheerers say, Good Game, well all come back for graduation.
~ from the mixed up head of Ms. Diana H Jumpweiler

On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 9:48 AM, Zachary Conley <zacko1g@gmail.com> wrote:

October 25th, 2017 will be my senior night soccer game to which everyone on this list is invited. I have
never really asked in a serious way for people to attend a game of mine despite 10 years of competitive
play, until now. I understand there are more important things going on and thus I will understand if people
are unable to attend, however, it would be very meaningful to have as many people as possible attend my
final home soccer game where all the seniors on the team, myself included, will be recognized. This game is
the culmination of a significant portion of my life and is far more important to me then attending my
graduation if it did happen to come down to one or the other.

Who could resist such an earnest wish? And seriously, who leaves high school with such an excellent grasp of
spelling and punctuation these days? Impressive, orange one.

Patsy decided that we needed our own uniforms for the event, and purchased a goodly amount of white t-
shirts in various sizes, upon which she planned to hand draw a soccer ball that moved to different spots in
Zackos name, e.g.:

But as the numbers coming to the game increased, this began to seem like a very time intensive project
indeed, so on the day before, she dropped by with two exemplars and a huge pile of blank shirts under the
weak excuse that they would be more meaningful if everybody did their own.

Naturally, her two exemplars were discouragingly perfect. But we did our best.

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But it was freezing cold, so we eventually had to put on coats and sweaters. Somebody in the group who looks
like me drafted a few small boys and their mother to wear extra shirts and root for Z. These two boys were the
best cheerleaders ever. They put their arms into Z shapes and hollered Z to the A to the C, K, O every time
Zacko came by.

Here are some shots of the guests.

Steve videotaping the proceedings. He eschewed a Z-shirt in

favor of leather and cowboy gear. He actually sat a bit apart
from us for some reason as well.

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The sisters we. Carlas red hat is a nod to Nona, who always used
to wear a red beret when out on the town.

Some particularly nefarious embarrassment of Z must have just

happened. And the culprits are the usual suspects.

Aunt C could not attend to her sorrow, but searched high and low
for a suitable gift. She finally found that St. Christopher is the
patron saint of soccer as well as travel, and sent this gorgeous
medal in time for the game. Zacko couldnt wear it as he said it
was a yellow card infraction to wear any jewelry, so I wore it for
him. It worked, because the team won 5 to 0.

Inspector Max Gadget, and beautiful freezing girlfriend Aliza. He

has attached the celebratory balloon to his lapel. Aliza is forced to
wear my sweatshirt under her z-shirt, since he wouldnt give up
the trench.

This particular sweatshirt has She Who Must Be Obeyed in large

white print, a message she should take to heart at once, as should
all young maidens during these critical marriagable years.

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Mama and Steve stand on Zackos number (10) along with other
parents of seniors at half time.

Zacko is escorted by a cheerleader to the spot, while his brilliant

record and future choices are read off on a loudspeaker. Coach
notes that Zacko has brought his entire flock of family. Entire flock
of family hoots and whistles and screams. Zacko refuses to look at
flock o family or acknowledge in any way, although his face is
bright pink. Zacko presents rose and balloon to Mama. A large
placard of him is snatched up by Diana and swathed in a z-shirt,
and then waved about for the second half of the game. Inspector
Max appropriates the balloon (see above).

The gorgeous Veronica and handsome Nicholas. Not too many

shots of them, because they were the ones taking all these photos
you see. They also had to drive back and forth a lot since new
family member Nova the dog was brought to the field, and was
taken away due to no dog rule, and thus, unable to frolic in her
own z-shirt.

A post-game hug from big Bro Alexander Conley; Esq. (Yes! Both
he and Ioana passed the bar with flying colors! Bring on the
lawsuits, its all in the family now.

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 Martinas funniest z-shirt of the day. She is still at an age where
brothers are enemies, especially when you are the youngest and
have four of them.

Yes, Zacko is Okaybut GO MARTINA!!!!!

(with love from your mother and your sisters and your aunt;
your sisters and your mother and your grandmas and your cousins
and your AUNT!)

Great friend Jeremiah shows up and is made to wear a z-shirt.

Mama and Aunt Diana are now wearing blankets and one glove
each, freezing, but still up for trying the rock and roll finger thing. I
believe we got it wrong again. We always do.

So I thought somebody would do a play by play for me, since I am not soccer-savvy, but I didnt ask in time,
hence my own version will have to do.

First, Zacko was kicking the ball. He did this a lot. Mean boys in blue tried to stop
him but they couldnt. Various boys got
hurt, but kept playing anyhow. Zacko was
one of them. They were all very good at
this, and so they very rarely got to the net.
Hours and hours went by of the same thing. It
was freezing, but none of them were

allowed to put on coats.

They touched each

other a lot more than I thought was allowed, as I thought you
could only use your head and feet in soccer. And they did use
their heads, hard and loud and scarily until I thought wed
have a mass concussion on our hands. After half time, Zacko
played on our side of the field, so we could see him better

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and yell even louder. Here he is pretending not to hear us when the
ball was offsides, or he was offsides, or whatever fool name they
give that thing where the player is allowed to throw the ball in.

Luckily, the boys seemed to know what was going on, so whenever
they did the Z to the A to the C.K.O. dance, I just joined in and
performed a strange little set of moves of my own loosely

assembling my hands into a Z and shuffling my feet

in a happy little jig. (Shut up, Pete.) This helped the
team enormously and they were up 5 to 0. It may
also have been the St. Christopher medal.

With about 30 minutes to go, something happened,

I believe it was during this maneuver. And then the whole game stopped and everybody went into huddles
and I guess the mean blue boys mustve done something horrible and not allowed, and our team had won. We
stayed awhile for pictures and some of the senior boys cried while pretending they were just cold.

We drove a long long way at Nicholas insistence

to go to a Waffle House he remembered from his
own high school misadventures. They took one
look at us and said they had no room, so we
went a long way farther to Dennys. Alexander
and Max had all you can eat pancakes, so we
were there a long time. Veronica pregnantly
exchanged her eggs for pickles. A chef in the back
began kvetching loudly about how she couldnt
do anything else because them people keep orderin more pancakes, so Martina and I left the table and
worked diligently to win a stuffed penguin. 10.00 in and we still couldnt get it, and Max tried too,
unsuccessfully, so we called it a night. But what a night!