he wins

Evan's soccer team, the Purple People Eaters, just completed a storybook turnaround, winning 6 of their last 7 games and beating the best teams in their league lopsidedly. (One team hadn't lost a game in two full seasons; the Eaters beat them last Saturday, 4-2, and again yesterday, 5-2.) Evan isn't an especially strong or aggressive athlete, but he uses his head and often seems to be in the right place at the right time; he scored the winning goal in one recent game and the goal that put another game out of reach, had a goal and a picture-perfect assist against the previously undefeated team, etc. During his games I seem unable to keep myself from yelling hysterically from the sidelines -- mostly positive stuff, I hope -- and afterwards I always want to relive the action with him, reviewing his goals frame by frame. He humors me. He can see how into it I am, so he participates in the conversations in much the same way that I participate when he's talking about Legos. But he'd clearly rather be talking about Legos. And I love that. I love the ability of 9-year-old boys to resist all of our efforts to make them something other than 9-year-old boys.