Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster) by Dave Barry Read Free Book Online

dancing, chanting, mooning * and making a valiant effort to consume all the alcohol in Western Europe. These people had
unbelievable
partying stamina. They went hard all night, every night. I’m sure most of them died soon afterward from bodily abuse. But they had a LOT of fun while they lasted.
    Another wonderful aspect of that World Cup was seeing the French undergo a transformation from a people who were too reserved, sophisticated, intellectual and just generally French to concern themselves with some childish game into batshit soccer maniacs. The French team that year was not favored to win, or even do particularly well; when Rob and I arrived, the locals we spoke to generally sneered at all the rah-rah patriotism of the foreign fans. The sneering began with the taxi driver who drove us from the airport, who, having determined that we were Americans and therefore yahoos, said, “To you,
ze sport
is very important. We do not care so much about
ze sport
.”
    We heard a lot of that. But the French team kept winning, and with each win the French people found that they cared more about
ze sport
. By the time they got into the final, everybody in Paris, including the
Mona Lisa
, was wearing blue, white and red face paint. In the final game, France played Brazil, which was heavily favored. But the French team—led by a wondrously talented player with the wondrous name Zinedine “Zizou” Zidane—won, and Paris went completely insane.
    Rob and I were among the million or so beyond-ecstatic people celebrating on the Champs-Élysées that night, and random French persons kept hugging and even kissing us, despite the fact that we were American yahoos. It was such a wildly happy night that the devastated Brazilians—there were thousands in Paris—soon ceased despairing about their loss and commenced partying. (The Brazilians are party people; more on this later.)
    But it wasn’t just the partying that got me into the World Cup; it was also—in fact mainly—the sport of soccer. I had never seen it played at the world-class level. All of the soccer I’d watched, aside from the pathetic school games I’d played in, involved my kids playing what we Americans call “youth soccer.” I am not knocking youth soccer. It’s a wholesome family activity that involves a tremendous amount of family togetherness in the form of families spending a lot of time together in confined spaces such as cars. There is so much togetherness that sometimes you sincerely want, as a family, to strangle each other.
    My daughter Sophie plays on a “travel” team, which means that every weekend we travel approximately 200 miles to play in a tournament against other travel teams, which have also traveled long distances, sometimes coming from the very same city where we originated. The reason we travel these distances, rather than just stay home and play each other there, is that the games must be played in a place where there is a reasonable chance that somebody will be struck by lightning. All youth soccer tournaments—this is a strict rule—must be played in a locale with a 95 percent or greater probability of violent thunderstorms. If we truly want to end the drought in sub-Saharan Africa, all we have to do is schedule a youth soccer tournament there. The entire region will be underwater within hours.
    So our youth soccer experience involves spending many hours in parking lots during heavy downpours, huddled together, as a family, in our cars, waiting for lightning to stop striking the field. On those rare occasions when the weather permits the girls to play, the parents, most of whom could not personally kick a ball without spraining both ankles, stand on the sidelines and yell contradictory instructions—“Go to the ball!” “Spread out!” etc.—which the girls wisely ignore. Every now and then one of the teams scores a goal, at which point all the