💄 TREE 597: Jeff Gill – Soccer and sisters

I’m doing an autobiography thing because I think it will make you think, which is the point of TREE.

4

At age seven, despite my protests, my parents signed me up to a team in the American Youth Soccer Organization. Soccer was the future, and it didn't matter that the kids didn't know how to play and neither did the coaches; the youth of America were catching up with the rest of the world and embracing the beautiful game. Also, it would help me be less shy.

I played on teams for six years and loved it. The best I ever achieved was the low end of good. When I was 11, that was enough to get me on the All Star team and play in the OPI (Old Pueblo Invitational or, as one of my teammates called it, Optical Penis Incorporated) tournament.

My kind and generous parents offered to host two teenagers from a California team. The night before the tournament, as I lay in my bed trying with all my might to appear asleep lest I was discovered to have heard, I was given an intense and vivid education on the propensity of teenage boys to tell lies about their sexual conquests. In the morning I rose with an exhausted body and an invigorated vocabulary.

Today I still love football. Even though I'm not a supporter, I have twice been thoroughly thrilled as I stood in Old Trafford listening to 60,000 sweaty fans singing profanities at the visiting team and watching 22 rich boy-men do amazing things with a ball.

5

I have four younger sisters. They are five, seven, 13 and 21 years younger than me. If you are going to have four sisters, make sure they all younger. They will still have a tremendous effect on you. They will all grow up to be superb and make you feel distinctly average (but in a way that makes you proud too). But they won’t be able to curl your hair and put you in a dress and make-up whenever the fancy strikes them. The two older ones did it to me once. My mother helped. (This illustration is based on a photograph that exists somewhere.) I cooperated. My father probably went somewhere and wept. I think he’s more chill about these things now.

I will write more about my adult church life in future posts, but this moment fits nicely here. It’s me in 2016 at church in my final year as a pastor. (It was quite a modern church and met in a cinema.) Stick with it to the end for a special treat.

Creativity needs boundaries so it has something to push against. Have you been pushing lately or staying safe?

Grow slowly
Jeff