When Girls Play

The first time my children experienced a World Cup, there were pictures of the German national team on every street corner, especially playgrounds. Supermarkets, drug stores and one Euro stores were flooded with World Cup tchotchke. The marketing mania around World Championship collective stickers, jerseys, cards, Nutella labels, you name it, was strategically aimed at kids. As a result, my boys knew the names of every player on the German team (not to mention the star players from other countries).

Our neighbors put up a huge screen in their garage, heated up an industrial sized BBQ grill and invited an intimate group of about 30 neighbors and their kids to watch all of the Germany games. Our no-TV law was lifted and my kids were allowed to stare at the screen that everyone sat in front of like zombies.

Prior to last Sunday, when the Women's World Cup started, the same fanfare was noticeably missing. I didn't hear the chatter of world champion frenzy when I picked up the kids from school. I didn't see the gigantic billboards that I saw for the male World Cup, even though Germany is hosting.

So I asked my Germany expert (aka my husband), "What's up? Why isn't there more hype around this World Cup?" He looked at me and said, "It's not the same thing. And don't say it's sexist, it's just not the same thing."

On Sunday afternoon, when I noticed my neighbor's garage door closed and no BBQ grill in sight, it seemed painfully clear that it just isn't a big deal when girls play. "Why not?" my eldest son asked his dad. Yes, yes! Ask my child, ask!

"You'll see," my husband said, on our way home to catch the German team play Canada. "It's not as exciting. Women play too slow . . ."

Of course, if you tell a boy that women play slow and that they're boring athletes, they'll believe it just because dad said so. A parent's "declaration" of anything at this age, is even more powerful that marketing.

"Look at that pass!" I cried out. "Whoo, look at her go! Slow, huh?" I nudged my husband. "Bet she can run faster than you!"

My youngest laughed and said, "And she can probably kick the ball farther than you, Papa."

In no time, my kids were joining me, "Garafreke's is awesome! Yeah! And the goalie's good too, right mom?"

"That's right," I said, "She is completely awesome."

"But she looks a little like a man," the youngest said.

Ugh.



Photo: flickr

Silence

Even big mouths like me need moments of silence and I'm afraid this is just one of those moments. I wish I could say that I'm as (seemingly) focused as this beautiful little girl meditating in school but it's a process. I'll get there. And I'll be back (I can only stay quiet for so long . . .)

Bis bald.



Photo: flickr

Homegrown and without a doubt

This is a section of our vegetable garden. We're lucky enough to live in the middle of the Berlin yet we're able to grow our own lettuce, tomatoes, beans, carrots, cucumbers, potatoes, onions, beets and herbs. Thanks to my husband's Green Thumb, we can eat homegrown vegetables for most of the summer.

Our garden is especially convenient now because there is no signal that German health officials understand the source of this deadly strain of E Coli. First it was Spanish cucumbers, then it wasn't, then it was bean sprouts, now it's cucumbers again. The point is, too little is known to rule out any raw vegetable and that is making some people go loco.

I know some Berliners who won't as much as look at raw vegetables and others who shrug it off and say they won't let such a small probability of infection make them change their lives.

We had guests last weekend who spent about 80% of their visit thinking up theories about where and how the bacteria could have come from.

I do have to say, when I first moved here I was shocked that no one used gloves in supermarkets and delis. When I saw bakers pick up a loaf of bread with their bare hands, my jaws dropped. I also cringed when I saw people put their veggies directly on the conveyor belt at the supermarket, claiming that they didn't want to waste a bag. "But that belt is dirty," I'd say. Then the defense was that vegetables could be washed and peeled. But then I noticed many health conscious people not peeling their carrots and cucumbers because all the nutrients were supposedly in the skin!

Luckily, times have changed and since the outbreak of The Swine Flue, I do see more food workers wearing gloves. But I can tell it is not culturally ingrained yet. At my food co-op, there are plastic gloves near the bread shelves but no one ever puts them on. For some reason, Germans seem to like to be able to touch that multi grain bread they're about to buy? More importantly, glove wearing doesn't seem to come all that naturally to all employees.

While I was deciding which bread to bag, I watched a co-op employee shelf all of the freshly baked loaves with his bare hands, decide they should be shelved differently, then re-shelf them, again without gloves. I sure hope he washed his hands after his last trip to the loo. . .

ATTENTION: "A colored child has lost his parents!"

This is what we heard at Wannsee over the weekend while we were making sand cakes. My sons looked up at the sky as if the voice was what they'd imagined the sound of God to be like. It was actually the cranky voice of an announcer who had already called the names of other children who had lost track of their parents in the crowd of sunbathers.

Most people laughed at this announcement. I struggled to put a grin across my face so my children wouldn't sense my annoyance. My husband looked right at me, expecting me to say something, a Current between Shores-like commentary about the mini incident. I did not. I sucked at in and let it rest until responding to a comment on the last post.

This morning, I understand why it bothered me.

Why did the announcer say the names of the other children on the loud speaker and with the black boy say "a colored boy"? Why did he not announce that boy's name?

Later, when we took our sons back to the car, a teenager looked at my kids and asked me, "Was one of them the colored boy that was lost?"

"No," I said, sarcastically. "It was another colored boy."