A football is a very simple object. It is round; that implies that it rolls. That is the most important of its qualities, but by no means the only meaningful one. Through observation, and a little bit of intuition, more or less gifted to us, we tend to realise other interesting peculiarities about footballs. But that takes time kicking the little thing about; describing this is not interesting. Finding out is.
I first remember being interested in kicking footballs in Fowlie Primary School. Fowlie was interesting in a strangely bleak way. It had two straight cell blocks for classrooms, a hard square between, a pond and a tree garden, and a very large grass field with several old mango trees on its corners. I doubt very many people have written tributes to Fowlie. It's gone now. But I remember the smell of the dead mangos lying in the mud, the hard afternoon sun on the back of my shirt, the birds that the groundskeeper kept, having buddies both Malay and Chinese (and being slightly curious why the Malay boys didn't take to classes that well), taking home books from the class library and not bringing them back (mea culpa, my friends), and lending my workbooks to my friends for 20 cents. It was a question that led to it: why don't you charge them for copying, said Mrs Teo. I collected 30 cents in total, a poor haul before I was rounded up.
I was the first to leave Fowlie for the gifted program. But I always say that I came from Fowlie. It really was a neighbourhood school, not that that means anything. Fowlie's shirts were polka dot purple on white; imagine that. I still remember an Indian canteen lady owner who gave me a piece of bread with kaya one forlorn afternoon, when the school bus driver asked me a confusing question in chinese, and I couldn't answer. Whenever I eat bread with kaya now, I think of her kindness; in some ways that's also why I hand out buns to foreigners I meet. Anyway, Fowlie had a large field, and we played football. I hit a ball nicely with my right foot, and it smacked a cone that served as a goal post. I felt that was easy, and fun.
In Tao Nan we played football during recess. We had to play it. 30 minutes wasn't very long, but we had to. We came back sweaty and gross, but that was a small matter. In one year we had ten footballs confiscated for various reasons, mostly because we were playing them in places other than the courts. I suspect that the teachers were annoyed with our love for it. Tao Nan had a big grass field then. Grass is very interesting, because you never know how the ball flops along on the grass, and when it's muddy, it stinks pretty bad.
I played football by myself at a nearby HDB plaza, trying to kick down my water bottle from a distance. Most of the other boys were better, but they were showy and lazy. I lent them my ball once, and they sent me to different houses to get it back. I cried when I realised that they had tricked me. It was my dad's old ball, but he didn't really seem too concerned about it. My dad played with me once or twice. He used to play at a big field opposite our flat in Hougang, when I was really young. My sister and I would go and watch from the side. I remember my dad would come back tired. My dad became annoyed with me when I couldn't pass the ball back to his feet. He really should have tried to explain to me that it was the most important thing in football, leading to many other things.
Besides playing on grass in the now-past law school premises, and a little in the evenings at a small court nearby, I sometimes went to play with senior Malay folks at East Coast Park. But I guess I only got serious when I joined the cabin crew boys at their twice weekly full pitch trainings, on turf. I was pretty bad, and I realised that quickly. I learnt by being open to bits of advice or lecturing from the guys. I think the most important things I learnt were to touch and pass properly, turn your eyes left and right every so often, making a quick decision, main senang, i.e. playing easy, and sticking with it, playing the offside line, and close pressing the other team in possession. Boy, I learnt a lot of Malay words.
I played well enough over time that I think I now fit into most amateur teams, at least, as a reliable replacement. I'm a good guy to have on the team. I love playing with certain teams - those more composed, and less likely to be frustrated when things go badly. I travelled to play too, thanks to the ownership and management of my main team. Now, frankly, I have the opportunity to play every day of the week. But I can't, I have to manage my feet, and my plantar problems. So I do other things.
But I say to people, football keeps me young. I'm 39 years old, and I can't think of a game that's given me more friendship, confidence and satisfaction. A very simple object; and it gives you a very complex game, and a very fascinating experience. It is a language to be spoken with anyone, capable of subtlety, fullness of expression and profound admiration. I like to think of it as the wisdom of simple things, if you can strip away all the bullshit that people bring onto the field. I think I can, at least.
