It was almost spring, during a painfully boring History class, when her mind took a trip to fantasy land. It was either that or fall asleep right in front of the teacher’s face. At least by daydreaming she could pretend she was paying attention. Should the teacher ask her something… well, that would be a problem for the Mikka of the future. Now, it was time for kick-off… Peñarol against Real Madrid, for the Intercontinental Cup, and she was getting ready to take the field. Her teammates, who included Mia Hamm, the only other girl footballer she’d ever known, were all next to her discussing strategy. It was time to head out and, as the captain of the team, she had to give a few encouraging words. She gathered the players in a circle, took a deep breath, and said the words she had said so many times in the face of adversity: “This is Peñarol!” With that, they hit the ground running.
The wonderful thing about daydreaming is the liberties you can take. You can fast forward, rewind, repeat, or even change the narrative, and nobody can object. If they do, you just erase them from the dream. The following 30 minutes continued with Mikka imagining different plays, goals and acrobatic stunts that somehow always ended up in her scoring or saving a last-second goal against her team. This time, there was no press conference afterwards and no autograph signing, her mind woke up suddenly and she said aloud:
“There have gotta be others like me.”
“Pardon, Melina?” her teacher replied, surprised by the interruption. Usually the kids sat through her lessons as barely functioning beings.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Melina exclaimed, trying to divine what the teacher might have been saying. Something about the Guerra Grande… “I just meant that I can’t be the only one having a hard time understanding the Big War… and its implications,” she added, in a lame attempt to sound more serious and cultured.
“No worries…” the teacher replied suspiciously. Nobody had ever worried about the implications of the Big War.
As in the movies, Melina was saved by the bell. Considering the conversation closed, she quickly gathered her stuff and got up to meet with her friends and grab a snack, before the next class.
A middle child, Melina had learned to navigate the intricacies of social interaction from an early age, and she was quite successful at it. She could discuss many things, as her own interests ranged from football to sharks, from civil rights to the Spice Girls. More importantly though, her nature made those around her feel calm and at ease, so she was often surrounded by different kinds of kids.
When she sat down for lunch with her usual clique and discussed the latest events, she observed the whole class and divided her schoolmates into two groups: the ones who played sports and the ones who had brothers. She knew she wasn’t the only girl who liked football. Every time Uruguay played, the entire country was paralyzed, and if the game were during school hours, the teachers would show it on a huge screen for everyone to join and cheer. During those games, there were several girls who would show up in the team’s jersey and discuss players, moves, positions, and of course, the VAR and fouls that always favored the other team.
She thought about asking them if they were playing on an actual team, maybe she had just been oblivious to the existence of a whole underground life of girl’s football, but she doubted it.
During her next class, Mikka wrote down a list of every girl she could think of who might play or know about teams. At the following breaks, she went around asking each and every one of them: sadly, nobody had even seen or considered a girls’ team.
That afternoon, after doing her homework, she went out to the park to play with the ball. It was a warm sunny day, but it was still spring, so she would only have a couple of hours before the night chills set in.
She had been going to that park since she was a little girl. At first with her parents, and then, slowly, they allowed her to go alone or with friends. It was really close to her house in a fairly calm neighborhood, and most of the families in the area had lived there for many years. Having grown up together, Mikka knew many of the kids living there. On nice days like these, you could find most of them playing with a ball, going out for ice cream, along with parents entertaining a toddler at the recently renovated slide and swings. Overall it was a safe neighborhood, but, having grown up in a city, you were taught from a young age about ‘stranger-danger’ and how not to wander off in the park. Milena also watched the news with her parents and at every family gathering she would actively listen to the grown-ups talk about current events and how unsafe the city was becoming.
These neighborhood kids had been her playmates since she was little, and she had always been the only girl. That had never been a problem though, until the more recent years when they started pushing her out, not picking her to be on any team, and ignoring her. Some of the kindest would tell her that it was because they were now growing bigger and were afraid to hurt her, but she knew that was bullshit (“That’s bullshit!” was her exact reply), as she knew that talent and speed – and she had both – always beat big, slow and clumsy.
She had tried to stand her ground and force herself onto a team, but they wouldn’t even pass her the ball, and after a while it was so clear that they did not want her there, that she pretended to sprain her ankle and slowly walked back home. She was angry, frustrated, but most of all, she was confused. She could sense that this was more than just being left-out, but she did not have the life experience to understand the background to the whole story.
That night, she talked about it with her parents, but they didn’t seem very interested. They could see she was hurt, but they just figured she would get over it soon.
However, that only increased her wish to be seen and accepted for what she enjoyed doing the most. She could see that all the boys were going to the small football field on one side of the park. The youngest football divisions trained there, but she had never gone before. It was time to change that. Yes, she shouldn’t stray from the park, but she took a calculated risk – she would only go for a little bit and be back before sunset.
(…to be continued…)
Transadaptation Volume 6 – Meaning? – Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted
January: A Regular Train Trip – Mateusz Tymoszewski (Poland)
February: Growing Up – Adriana Uribe (Columbia)
March: Mess – Veronika Groke (Austria)
April: The Roads We Take – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)
May: Need – Nadia Silva Castro (Brazil)
June: “Next Sunshine” – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)
July: Intentions – Narantsogt Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)
August: Planet Kyiv – Anastasiia Leonova (Ukraine)
September: Torn – Ulrike Bergmeister (Germany)
October: Stories of Outcast Souls – Armine Asryan (Armenia)
November: Ronaldinha – Alejandra Baccino Uberti (Uruguay)
December: Aimlessly – Krisztina Janosi (Hungary)
Background – Context
Transadaptation Volume 5: Of Flowing Vicissitudes – Life Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2024)
Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)
Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)
Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)
Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)
Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)
L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)
From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)
Emblems and stories on the international community
Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world
Credits
Top row (left to right): 1. Montevideo, Uruguay – The neighborhood – nanrinal (Shutterstock); 2. Punta del Este, Uruguay – The beach bar – DFLC Multimedia Designer (Shutterstock); 3. Montevideo, Uruguay – Avenida de 18 Julio – Oliver de la Haye (Shutterstock)
Middle row (left to right): 1. Montevideo, Uruguay – In la figurita – DFLC Multimedia Designer (Shutterstock); 2. Uruguay – Drinking mate – HC Fotostudio (Shutterstock); 3. Montevideo, Uruguay – Emergency – Luis Barboza (Shutterstock)
Bottom row (left to right): 1. Montevideo, Uruguay – Piedras street – DFLC Multimedia Designer (Shutterstock); 2. Piriapolis, Uruguay – The boardwalk – DFLC Multimedia Designer (Shutterstock); 3. Montevideo, Uruguay – September 15 – Maria Pinheiro (Shutterstock)
Source: The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed