Well, okay, maybe the soccer ball isn't all that lucky. But we are to still own it! As I have mentioned before, we have the tiniest backyard. I mean tiny. And they don't call them yards here, they call them gardens. Even if there isn't actually much growing there, as in our case. Despite the fact that our garden is tiny, our girls love to play in it. They ride their bikes (yes, they really do!) in tiny little circles, they jump on their pogo stick… Although, I raced downstairs in my bathrobe when they decided to pogo on the back deck at 7am. It sounded like a jackhammer! I thought, "our neighbors are going to kill us!". And, they play soccer. They kick the ball around, and then it goes over the back wall… somewhere over the back wall. We live in the city. We don't know our back neighbors, as a matter of fact, we back up to a small block of flats, and some other houses that are a block back. And our garden walls are high enough that you cannot see over and we couldn't determine where the soccer ball went. So, I faced some sad little girls and told them they probably had seen the last of that ball, and hadn't I told them to be careful for pete's sake??!!
They were especially sad because girls don't play soccer here… or football as the rest of the world calls it. They just don't, I don't really know why. There are other sports that are primarily for girls, I guess. Anyhow, since girls don't play here, big companies like Nike don't market equipment to girls. So, we weren't going to be able to replace a pink soccer ball. A week went by, and we bought a boring black and grey soccer ball. And then one afternoon, lo and behold, we came home and there was our pink soccer ball, sitting right on our doorstep!
So, I immediately went inside and used a sharpie to write our address on the ball, just in case it were to go over the wall again. Maybe that would help increase the odds it would be returned.
And, then, the girls immediately went out back to play with their newly recovered ball. And, it promptly went over the wall again.
And a few days later, it was back on our doorstep! The girls have been much more careful since then and the ball hasn't had any more adventures. I think maybe I need to draw a cool face on it like that Tom Hanks movie… what do you think? ;)
