Recovery Mission: Goal!

Last November word went out over the league e-mail list that the U-8 soccer goals needed a home for the winter. "The goals break down into a pile of PVC pipes about 6 ft long," wrote Ben Wilson, Assistant Coach for the Pirate Pixies, PTA President at the New School, Harry Potter fan, and all-around good guy. "Some of them are glued together, so it's not a super neat pile, but it doesn't take up too much space. I was able to fit them all in my VW van when I took them off the field." He provided photographic evidence for this claim:


And indeed, this is pretty much what they looked like in the back of Andrew's car when he brought them home, a bit begrudgingly -- possibly because I was the one who foolishly piped up and offered to help, whereas he was the one who had to go down to the field on a rainy November afternoon and wrestle with tangled nets and muddy pipes.

After spending nine months in our side yard, the pile of pipes looked considerably grubbier. (Somehow they never made it into the dry space under the porch, which is where I had imagined they would spend the winter when I offered to take them -- possibly because the space under the porch is still full of detritus from the Great Tree House Project of 2008.) The idea that this tangled pile of grimy, chipped PVC pipes trailing shreds of duct tape could somehow be reassembled into anything remotely functional seemed pretty laughable, frankly. And the prospect of digging them out of the muddy yard and hauling them down to the playfield felt pretty daunting.

I think Andrew and I were both half hoping that by the time soccer season rolled around again Ben would have forgotten who had taken the goals home back in November. Or that, if he did come looking for them, they would have vanished completely under the creeping ivy at the edge of the yard, and then we could just shrug our shoulders and say, "Goals? What goals? Do you see any goals around here? No, didn't think so."

But the other half of me couldn't quite concede that yet another well-meaning offer of assistance had succumbed to the Mead Street chaos. So when the e-mail finally came requesting delivery of the goals to the soccer field this week, there was definitely a glimmer of relief amid the cloud of guilt and exhaustion. Maybe we could pull a rabbit out of this hat after all. (And if not, then at least the pile of pipes would be out of our yard.)

So it was that Thursday evening found us cramming thirty-odd lengths of pipe into the back of the Subaru and heading, not for the dump (which would certainly have made sense in some universes), but to Dearborn Playfield, where several teams were already practicing. Balls and kids wove jerkily around orange cones; coaches with clipboards and whistles barked out instructions; parents gathered in conversational knots around the edges of the field, comparing notes on the first day of school.

We carefully backed the wagon down the footpath to the field and unloaded the pipes into an untidy heap next to the bleachers, fully intending to leap back into the car and drive off to drown our chagrin at Flying Squirrel Pizza. But instead of fleeing the scene of our criminal negligence, we paused to survey the enormous brainteaser spread out on the grass before us. We put our hands on our hips. Well, we said, we might as well sort out the short and long pieces. Andrew pointed out the ones with connecting collars along them, into which the cross-braces could be fitted.

Curious onlookers began to offer advice. Then one of them stepped in to hand us the piece that looked just like the one we were fumbling with, only with a left-facing elbow joint. Aha! Using Andrew’s vague memory of the goals’ original structure, along with hints gleaned from a careful study of the available puzzle pieces, our little group managed to assemble a prototype. Then Marenko went back to his truck for a box knife and a mallet.

A philosophical and logistical dilemma presented itself at this point: Should we attempt to reconstruct the four goals exactly as they had been, piece for piece, pairing up the edges of the broken joints and aligning the layers of duct tape? Or could we mix and match (the pieces had been interchangeable at one point, after all, though they hadn’t come apart that way), give the broken bits the old heave-ho, and salvage two or three solid goals out of the pile? Or maybe we ought to use the battered but sturdy plastic tubes to build a whole new kind of soccer goal – with crazy rococo flaring tops, say. Or a trebuchet, perhaps. Or a human-powered Ferris wheel.

By the time the mosquitoes arrived in earnest, we had opted for the mix & match approach, Marenko had taken the lead, and Ben was on his way to serve as closer. The pizza delay had become something of a crisis situation for at least one member of the family, so we said our farewells and headed out: a little sorry we wouldn’t be there to witness the completion of the four goals we had given up for dead, but happy that we had managed, with help from friends & strangers, to get them on their way. And confident that with such willing and competent folks on the job, there would indeed be four goals standing on the field for the first game of the season on Saturday.

P.S. They were!