MY AMAZING AND POWERFUL ASS

January 6, 2004 | 10:42pm

My second soccer season started with a game against the Bruisers. Last season I pissed some dude off, he kicked my ankle so hard I couldn’t run on it for over three weeks, that bitch. Like any other Latino, I figured that if I went to the doctor she’d find something really wrong with me like a strained ligament or pink eye. So I let it heal on its own and limped only when no one was looking.

But back to the game, it starts and suddenly I’m terrified of hurting my ankle again. I don’t commit to playing aggressively and I’m not communicating with my team. When I realize that’s not helping anyone I finally start talking. I get hit from behind and let out the loudest "AAAAAAHHHHH" as I relive in my mind the moment when my ankle got bashed a few weeks ago. I cringe but I know I’m okay, just then number 3 on their team quips "Don’t be such a cry baby." I swore to him that the tears I had were from the freezing weather.

I’m really getting into the game some twenty minutes later when player 13 really starts putting pressuring on me. I’m not afraid, mostly because I don’t know what’s going on directly behind me. Suddenly, he flies right over my shoulder and onto the ground. I’m already mid step, when I see his face just inches in front of my foot. And I kick him. It was the slowest and hardest kick I’ve ever planted on a human face.

I feel really bad for a few minutes after seeing this guy’s bloody eyebrow until I inflict even more pain on another player. This Austrian guy slides right into me then bends over and his knees twist in some unnatural angle. At this point I’m clueless as to why I keep injuring their players. Two more minutes pass and I blindly run into number 13 splitting his lip with my shoulder and drawing yet more blood from his battered face.

I want to get called out of the game. I’m inflicting serious pain on guys twice my size and I realize then that I have no talent for soccer. I only started playing last year and when people worse than me believed I’d played for years I started to think I did, too. Only now I’m pretty sure that I completely suck.

Merce, the most talented jock ever, teaches me a new word and this gives me hope. He tells me that when he’s near me and ready to pass the ball but I run up ahead, I should shout, "THROUGH!" This will give him an audio clue so he knows were to find me and thus direct the ball. A normal person would know that that was a special circumstance. But like an infant who learns the word "boobies" I begin yelling, "THROUGH!" and running in front of every ball that comes near me even if it means running away from it. Like I said, I suck.

So where do I turn to when I feel insipid and stupid? To my inner superhero of course! I imagine being able to throw myself twenty feet forward diving at a ball going heading into our goal. It’s 5-0 now (okay, I wasn’t imagining the score, we were really losing) and suddenly I can fly over the ball and slam it out of our net before my body even touches the ground. The crowd starts cheering and I brush it off like I always do when I’m really proud of something I do. "It was nothing," I say.

But in reality I have no soccer skills and I only one thing going for me. I’ve got My Amazing And Powerful Ass (MAPA). I can block balls coming at supersonic speeds with MAPA. I can fling players away from me up to ten feet with MAPA. And with MAPA my celebrity status on the field in unrivaled. During my very first game soccer game the ref pulled me aside and said, "Son, pull in your ass so you don’t hurt anyone." He has no idea what MAPA can really do and I’ll keep that a secret, that's for another blog.