Lexington Park Offsides

This is a story I will get back to. It’s based on a soccer referee in Canada. I often wonder how cool a life he made for himself. Immigrants are the lifeblood of many a successful country.

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Silvan lives in Waterloo, Ontario, where he also works as a taxi driver, partly because it gives him the flexibility to work around his refereeing schedule. Waterloo’s first wave of immigrants to the area was made up of Mennonites from Pennsylvania. They bought deeds to land parcels from Beasley and began to move into the area in 1804. Yet Silvan is a man of the road travelling from town to town officiating soccer matches. Not everybody loves what he does, yet he loves what he does. He also loves to drive his cab, it pays the bills and he can work it around his schedule. He also meets many different people along the way.

The cab drivers meet on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in Lexington Park for a respite from driving a cab and of course to enjoy an hour of soccer on a less than perfect pitch.   The afternoon sun seems more relentless than years past, yet this is the lax time in a cabbies day. So they play midday and get on with their day. We always wonder why cabbies have air fresheners in their cars.  Actually Silvan goes home and showers after their soccer matches so he can have a pleasant lunch with his wife. He was happy with the game today as he scored the only goal of the match with a lucky toe poke that was beyond his current skill set. He has been away from the game for years and these cab drivers are pretty damn good at soccer.

His wife had prepared a tomato based vegetable soup and he smelled the garlic and oregano when he walked into the room. He was surprised and delighted to see his daughter there as well as she carried a warm loaf of bread that seemed perfect despite the insistent heat of the day. The smell of the garlic and basil hit the back of his his  senses with pinpoint accuracy. The sudden presence of his daughter picqued  his curiosity as he had not seen her in weeks and he suddenly regretted not seeing her. Yet he savored her presence,   She had gone through a very difficult time with breakup she took extraordinarily hard. It is such a shame to be divorced at such an early age. It was was still nice to see her.