Does not Make


More Signs of Spring.
The soccer team John was on last year finally gasped its last and expired. The county league's co-ed teams require you to field a certain number of women in every game, and it was getting too difficult for the "Biscuit Heads" to recruit enough female players. The team had a core of very decent players, though, and those players (including John) were absorbed en masse into another team called the "Macht Nichts." The core of this team has been together for 30 years, and to commemorate this, they all wear jerseys with a number "30" on the back (their old jerseys all read "25," so this continues a tradition).

Yesterday was the first game with the new Macht Nichts and it was an interesting lesson in how to integrate two distinct groups of people. In an adult-league team whose core has been together for 30 years, John and his compatriots from the Biscuit Heads count as veritable children. The team manager on this team is a fellow sideline sitter, which is a change from the BH's player/managers, and since she had no notion as to who was who on this new, big, combined team, I helped her with names and faces. This led to jokes - the old team had a large family of two brothers, one cousin, and his spouse, all of whom are named "Lisle." There are also a lot of men named "John." Combine that with the fact that everyone's number is 30, and this was a typical interchange:

Mickey: "Who's the big one over there?"

Me: "Number 30?"

Mickey: "Yeah - the tall, blonde one."

Me: "That's a Lisle."

Mickey: "Which one?"

Me: "Triple-word-score - that number 30 is John Lisle."

"Macht Nicht" loosely translates as "Whatever" (as in, "What's the name of your team?" "You mean the team has to have a name? Geez - whatever."), but literally translates as "Does not Make," and at the beginning of the game, there was a lot of "them" and "us." By the end of the game, though, there was more "us" than anything else. It seems that "Macht Nicht" actually does make something - a team.
Posted: Monday - April 11, 2005 at 07:55 AM         | |

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