As our Illinois summer inches into autumn, it’s time once again to talk about corn. Especially with a boy or girl heading into a new season of their life, like high school or college.
As in: “If you were corn, what kind of corn would you be?”
I spent a lot of time with teenagers when I was a coach for Stars ‘n Stripes International Soccer Tours, which took young American soccer players to compete all over Europe and other exciting places, like Iceland and Australia. We would put together boys’ and girls’ teams from places as far apart as Chicago, Dallas, and Memphis, and compete for three to five weeks at the largest youth soccer tournaments in the world, like Norway’s Oslo Cup, Denmark’s Dana Cup, or Sweden’s Gothia Cup.
Most of the young athletes were total strangers to each other, and before they got to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses as players, it was important to help them learn about each other as people in general.
But because such tours often involved long, boring bus rides, many of the teens plugged in their earphones or curled up for a nap. And it’s hard to get to know anybody when you go down that road.
When that was likely to happen, I would walk to the middle of the bus, where a handful of players were just beginning to zone out.
“Hey,” I would say to them, and I would point out the window at a passing corn field. (For the record, much of Sweden looks exactly like much of Illinois.) “See that corn? If you were a stalk of corn, would you rather be the stalk right at the edge of the field, where you could watch the world pass by, or would you want to be deep in the center of the field, nestled among all your fellow corns?”
There would be a moment of stunned silence, because although they didn’t know me yet, this was still the coach asking them a question. And you listen to the coach, right? Even if he seems a bit weird.
“Do we have to be corn?” says Darrell. “Can I be something else, like a horse?”
“Not yet, Darrell. Maybe we’ll be horses later. For now we’re just corn. What’ll it be? Edge or center?”
And so the conversation begins, tentative at first, but increasingly insistent, with my mouth mostly shut and my ears mostly open:
“Well, the center would be too boring,” Darrell would say. “Nothing to see but more corn. And corn is boring.”
“Yeah, but would you be bored with corn if you were also corn?” Anne might say.
“I probably would be if I were stuck in the center, with nothing to see but more corn.”
“Yeah, but it’s safer there,” Mike might offer. “All it takes is a strong wind to blow you down if you were right at the edge. I’ll take the center.”
“Yeah, but think of all the humidity and mosquitos at the center. I’d hate that.”
“Mosquitos don’t eat corn,” Pat might point out.
“No, but birds and bats eat mosquitos, and then they poop all over the corn. But not at the edge. Fewer mosquitos, so fewer birds.”
“Yeah, but what about rabbits? Or deer?”
“What about them?”
And so it would go, now getting just loud enough to prompt someone else to pull out his ear plugs or look up from a nap to see what was going on.
“This is stupid,” Darrell would say after a while. “Can we talk about anything but corn?”
“Not quite yet,” I would say, “because now it’s harvest time, and now you’re just one single kernel of corn, no matter whether your stalk stood in the center or out on the edge. What do you want to happen next for you as a kernel? A piece of popcorn? A cornflake? Part of a nacho?”
“This is stupid,” Darrell would say again.
“What, would it better if we were horses, like you wanted to be?” Steve would say.
“Wait,” Andrea would say, “once we’re just a kernel, do we have to be processed into anything else? Can’t we still just be a corn kernel that gets dried and planted to be another whole stalk next season?”
“Oh, you mean like corn Heaven?” Chris might ask.
“Would that be Heaven for a corn?” asks Hernan, just waking up from the next row of seats, but who had been listening for who knows how long. “Maybe more like corn reincarnation.”
“Do you believe in that? Which religion is that?”
“This is stupid,” Darrell would insist as he reached for his earplugs. “Corn. You’ll probably all end up getting creamed.”
At some point I would get up and walk away from the conversation, because it would have done all that I wanted it to. Because by now, those young teammates were learning a lot more about each other than just what kind of cereal grain they wanted to be. And a lot of what they would learn about each other would carry over to the soccer field.
For example, will you be able to trust Darrell to stick with the game plan?
Will Andrea be likely to pass you the ball if you have a better shot?
Can Hernan be a good leader when you’re down a goal late in the game?
Oh, there’s so much to learn from a field of corn, even if it’s Swedish corn and you don’t speak the language.
Ask your grandkids. You’ll see.
TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.
