Chins Up, Shoulders Down.

The body language of a 9yo who has just scored an own goal, below. Although it's probably more chin up, shoulders forward and hands clutched to middle. This is taken minutes afterwards where he was still fighting back the devastated tears, knowing he had to pick himself up and play on.  Poor little sausage.



And this is him at half time being consoled by another Dad.  What really, really impressed me was Cherub's fortitude in keeping himself together, playing on while wiping away tears and going on to  set up a team-mate for a scoring opportunity.  Brave boy.



The heartbreak too, is that he - being a defender - has never scored a goal in a match before. And his first one ever was a mishit header to the wrong goalmouth.  He was trying to clear it and instead he knocked it in. Ah well.  His team lost 5-3, the final game for the season. Climber's last match for the season was a draw against the top team, and Climber was put in goal for the second half, having not played goalie for the whole season. He did a solid job, despite feeling reluctant about being played there. I was proud of him too.



In other news, I came down with the gastro bug afflicting the household on Thursday evening. Bam! Talk about violent. Friday I was confined to bed trying to gather my strength for Saturday-Morning-Kidtap, 5 Classes! I was still pretty weak Saturday so I asked Climber to be my assistant tap teacher with the 3 junior classes.  He led the warm-ups for me and was a star.  A nervous star, but he did so well, and the little kids loved it. A big kid teaching them!



There was an election on the weekend as well. I was feeling pretty disillusioned with the degree of lowest-common-denominator politics and reporting so I cast my vote and then pretended the whole thing wasn't happening. As a psychologist once said to me Denial is a much-maligned coping mechanism.