At first, everything was out of focus. A strangely familiar
haze seemed to have engulfed him. After blinking a few times, the blurriness began
to fade and slowly his vision adjusted to the surroundings.
A concerned looking Pete McCarthy was leaning over him.
Tenderly cradling the back of Leo’s neck with one hand, whilst waving a water
bottle above his face with the other.
But it wasn’t the 11-year-old Pete McCarthy who Leo found
himself staring up at. It was the 40-year-old version.
Initially, Leo couldn’t make sense of what was happening. He tried to speak. Needed to ask questions. Where was he? What had happened? What year was this?
But he couldn’t get his thoughts in order. His words just came
out as garbled gibberish.
“You alright, son?” Pete asked, sounding concerned. He
carefully dropped the water bottle to one side of the prone boy. “How many
fingers am I holding up?” he enquired, raising three digits.
Leo just stared uncomprehendingly at his father. “P... P…” he began to say, before realising that calling his actual Dad ‘Pete’ would sound as odd as calling the younger Pete ‘Dad’.
“D… Dad?” he corrected himself. “That is
really you, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry, Pete, there’s no way I can allow him to carry
on,” Leo heard another voice say. Slowly, Leo turned his head slightly and
noticed his coach standing behind the crouched form of his father.
Somewhat begrudgingly, Pete inclined his head. “Yeah… you’re
probably right. I’ll take him home and let him laze about on the sofa for the
rest of the day.”
“You should take him to the hospital, really,” advised the
coach. “He might have a concussion.”
Pete dismissively waved away the coach’s suggestion. “Nah,
he’ll be fine, won’t you, boy?”
A still confused Leo gingerly nodded his head. Not that he
really knew what he was agreeing to.
“Are you sure?” the coach pressed on, as Leo, with the aid of
his father, sat up. “It might be worth getting him checked out. Just in case.”
“It’s just a ball in the face,” Pete countered, clearly not
believing a hospital trip was necessary. The truth was, that there was still a
part of him that would have liked his son to at least try and play on. “Look,
I’ll take him home first and then, if he shows signs of dopiness – beyond the
usual, I mean – then we’ll take a trip to the hospital. Fair?”
“It’s totally up to you,” replied the coach, his tone
suggesting that he wished it wasn’t.
Decision made, Pete carefully scooped Leo up into his arms
and carried him to his car.
Leo still felt woozy during much of the drive home. His mind whirred as he sat in the back of his Dad’s car, staring forlornly out of the window.
His face still stung from where the ball had struck him. Definitely
once. Possibly twice. Leo could no longer work out what was real and what
wasn’t.
He could clearly remember every single thing that had happened from the moment he’d been prodded awake in the field by Matt and the others. Meeting his Dad as a young boy. Being coached (of sorts) by his grandad. The game. The awful clothes! Everything.
Right up until the moment he’d gone up
for a header and then somehow woken back up in his normal time. Who needed a
Tardis? A football in the face seemed to have much the same affect. At least, it
did for Leo.
Strangely, the events at that Portland City game seemed more real that his own. They were certainly far more memorable.
He knew that in the ‘olden’-days game, his team had been
winning 4-1 and that he’d played an absolute blinder. He didn’t have a clue
what the score had been in his own actual game.
Concerned by his son’s lethargy, Pete offered to stop at a
nearby takeaway for a burger, chips and strawberry milkshake. The offer had the
desired effect. Leo instantly perked up, especially when his Dad agreed to let
him have his favourite chocolate-chip ice cream for pudding.
Being a Sunday lunchtime, the drive-thru queue at their
local fast food outlet was annoyingly long. But not wanting to needlessly move
Leo from the car, Pete nosed his car into the seemingly never-ending line.
They’d been sitting in the queue for a few minutes, when Pete
adjusted his seatbelt so that he could turn to face his son.
“You’ve got to stop doing that, you know, boy,” he said in
an admonishing tone. “Closing your eyes when you head a football. It’s
dangerous. I would never have done that when I was your age.”
Leo said the first thing that came to mind. He couldn’t stop
himself. “That’s because you wouldn’t have tried to head it, though, isn’t it,
Dad? You would have run away from it.”
“What…” Pete spluttered, completely taken aback. He wasn’t used
to Leo questioning him. “… What?! of course I would have headed it. Do you know
what my coach… your Grandad… would say if I had shut my eyes, or ducked out the
way of the ball?”
“He wouldn’t have been happy at all,” answered Leo,
knowingly. “He probably would have heavily criticised you, made you feel really
small in front of your teammates, and left you feeling miserable. Told you that
you were rubbish. Called you a great wet lettuce. And blamed you for everything
that went wrong. Even when it wasn’t your fault.”
Pete tried to respond. But he couldn’t. Memories of his own
football-playing childhood had suddenly come flooding to the forefront of his
mind. Not particularly happy memories, if truth be told.
His reverie was halted by the honk of a car horn. The queue had reduced slightly, and the car behind was becoming increasingly impatient that Pete hadn’t nudged forward.
Shaking his head in an attempt to clear the
unpleasant recollections, Pete fixed his eyes to the front windscreen, shifted
the car into gear and edged a couple of spaces closer to the drive-thru’s
intercom system.
Once they were stationary again, he turned back to face his son. There were so many questions he wanted to ask Leo. But he didn’t know quite how to phrase them. Couldn’t find the right words.
Ultimately, he didn’t
have to say anything. For it was Leo who spoke next. And when he did, it was as
though he could read his father’s mind.
“I just wish that you’d just let me play for fun sometimes,”
the boy said, closely echoing the words a young Pete McCarthy had (possibly)
spoken to him earlier that morning. “You know, with a smile on my face. The way
all the other boys do. For you not to moan at me every few minutes. I love playing football, Dad. I really do. Except… sometimes… I don’t love it. You know?”
Pete nodded. He did know. He knew exactly what his son was
talking about. An outlandish sense of deja-vu suddenly washed over him.
He’d spoken those exact words before! He was sure he had. Although exactly when
he had said them, and who he had said them to, he could not for the life of him
remember.
The queue moved forward again. This time Pete noticed before
the man in the car behind had cause to toot his horn.
They were now at the intercom system. Pete ordered their
food and drink. A simple task that proved far harder than it should have been.
It took him numerous attempts to get the order right. And even then, he ordered
a banana milkshake instead of a strawberry one.
He was completely distracted. His mind elsewhere. Wading through memories of his own experiences as a young footballer.
Quickly
realising that his recollections of the past had been viewed through a pair of
the rosiest tinted glasses imaginable.
It was at that very drive-thru, that Pete made an important
decision. He was going to change. At least when it came to football. From now on, he was going to be supportive. Encouraging. No more moaning. No more
unnecessary criticism.
He was going to be the exact type of football Dad that he
wished his own father had been to him!
Epilogue to follow later today.
Text and image copyright © David Fuller
David Fuller asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the author or publishers.
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