He ain't heavy

Blogging | October 28, 2011

The truth was, I didn’t have time.

I had papers to mark, lessons to plan, a load of washing to do, a weekend bag to pack, and emails to send.

I should not have been taking an hour out of my work day to attend a friendly soccer match.

But when a text message came through, I knew I had to find a few minutes.

“Coming to the game?”, it said.

My brother.

He’s a bit of a drifter, my brother.

Kind of self sufficient.

He gets along well with people, but he doesn’t really need to have them around.

So when he sent me that message, I knew it was because he really, really, wanted me to be there.

“On my way,” I replied, turning off my computer.

Stevie was playing on the faculty team- a mish mash of university employees (of various age, skill and waistline).

They were up against a pack of young, fit and fast students who, in their pristine yellow and black matching uniforms, resembled a swarm of bumblebees.

I spotted my brother on the field, dressed in red.

“Wooooooooooooooh! Go Stevie! Yeeah!” I squealed, throwing my arms up in the air as the teams completed their warm ups.

It was exactly the kind of thing I would do on Sundays at the Coolum Soccer Field during the late 80s and early 90s.

Back then, my shy big brother would put his head down and pretend that the freckle-faced spectacle on the sideline was not from the same gene pool as him.

But this day, things were different.

This day, Stevie gave me big grin and waved as the referee blew his whistle.

I’m not going to tell you what happened next- mostly because I’m not really sure.

There was a lot of running, a lot of heading, and, what appeared to be, some quite nice salsa stepping around the ball.

The faculty members ran until they could run no more, as huge droplets of sweat fell from their foreheads.

They even gave the young bumblebees a run for their money (quite literally, in fact- the university president has promised to give 100,000 KRW to every member of the winning team).

My brother was most definitely the star of the faculty side.

“Your brother looks just like an Australian kid playing in front of his parents,” said my Korean Australian colleague, Jae.

“You should be so proud of him, he never gives up.

“He uses his whole body and flies through the air like he weighs nothing”.

“Well,” I said.

“He ain't heavy”.

He’s my brother.

I had to run to class, so I left the match with a few minutes left on the clock.

The faculty went down 5-3.

Despite the loss, I smiled all the way back to the office.