Magnet Ball: 22 very young kids and one elusive soccer ball

Everybody plays, nobody scores and no one's feelings get hurt

After 56 years of typing for a living I frequently get asked if I have a favorite column.

It's a tough question, given that there are approximately 14,111 columns to choose from, all of them Pulitzer-quality efforts that will no doubt be framed and hanging in a museum one day.

But even if 14,000 of those columns were so bad that the family dog would refuse to bring them in from the doorstep, I'd still have a hundred or so to choose from.

While it's not necessarily an all-time favorite, one that gets frequently mentioned to me by other parents is the time long ago when I signed up my two oldest children, Ted, age 8, and Erin, age 6, for their first experience playing soccer.

Had they demanded this experience?

Hardly.

But, you know, a little exercise is good for the soul, and maybe if you expose your kids to enough stuff, they'll find something they truly love.

At least that's the theory.

At that point in my journalistic career, I had never covered a soccer game as a sportswriter, played in a soccer game as an athlete or attended a soccer game as a fan. And it was not a game I had grown up with in my youth, when neighborhood hide-and-seek was the dominant after-dinner activity on summer nights.

Put simply, soccer was not a sport on my leisure-time radar.

I didn't even know if the proper term was "soccer game" or "soccer match." Still don't.

Nevertheless, the column began, like 4,000 other Davis parents, I spend my Saturday mornings watching Ted and Erin - my roommates - chase a black-and-white ball around Community Park.

Erin was attracted to the game when she learned that her team, the Shamrocks, was to wear deep green jerseys, which, she figured, matched her Irish blood.

She also thinks boys on the team are a nice touch.

Ted, meanwhile, likes the idea of a number on his back. He's not sure why he has a number, but it gives him an identity he cherishes.