Twenty for Seven

I’m at the Whitecaps game with Lisa. We’ve got two 7 year old boys with us, her son Zane, and Zane’s friend Ty. They’re outfitted in Whitecaps shirts, scarves, and caps, and even though Ty blasphemously tells me that he thinks “soccer is boring”, it seems like they are having a good time while we stand and sing the national anthem and watch the fireworks go off at the beginning of the game.

It might help that they are loaded down with snacks: during the course of the game, they polish off blue slurpees, hot dogs, Sprite, popcorn, cotton candy and gum. They also flirt with three grade 1 girls who are sitting in the row behind them, seemingly parentless. Lisa finds a notepad in her purse and the boys keep themselves busy playing hangman and x’s and o’s. Once or twice their eyes might drift towards the soccer field but I’m not sure. (Of course, I am watching the game, myself, so I might not have caught it.)

In the car on the way out of the stadium parking lot it is pure gridlock. Lisa and I are chatting when we suddenly notice that the boys have their windows down all the way, elbows leaning out, and, perhaps emboldened by all the blue food dye and MSG in their systems, and their success with the grade 1 girls, they are talking to a girl in the car beside us. She’s got her hair in a low side ponytail with a flower fastened in it and probably hasn’t had her licence for long. She’s maybe 18 or 20 and in the car by herself. “Hey, were you at the Whitecaps game?” Ty asks, all cool.

She answers and they actually chat back and forth for a second.

Lisa and I clue in to what’s going on. “Ty!” I said, “That girl is, like 20! Are you flirting with her?”

“Yeah,” he admits. “Old girls are sexy.”