Surrendering to Motherhood: Learning World Cup soccer, one chant at a time

About a week ago, screams erupted from the neighbor's house on the other side of us.

Sitting inside on our comfy couches, Mr. Huffman and I looked at each other.

What was THAT?

It didn't sound like a "Help me, I'm being murdered" scream. It was a quick shout/scream, and from multiple people.

My husband looked at his phone. Oh, he said a few seconds later. I know. It's the World Cup. Mexico is playing and they just scored a goal.

A few days later, a chant began echoing around the other side of our house.

AR-GEN-TIN-A! AR-GEN-TIN-A! AR-GEN-TIN-A!

My husband looked at his phone again. Oh, he said a few seconds later. I know. It's the World Cup. Argentina is playing and they just scored a goal.

With all the commotion around us, and World Cup news spreading on social media I can now announce: I have become a (completely temporary) FIFA/soccer fan.

Faced with daily news about bombs and wars, Ebola outbreaks, gas prices and algae-filled reflecting ponds, I say anything that draws Americans and the rest of the world together for a good time gets a thumbs up.

This is my history with soccer. When I was 7, my parents convinced me to sign up for the city's rec department soccer league. Let's just say that I was not the star player on our team, although I am responsible with coming up with our team's name.

Somehow our coach (later my 7th grade math teacher, ugh) agreed to my suggestion that we call ourselves the Hustlers, which even back then I knew was the WRONG name for a little girls' soccer team. But the Hustlers we were, and we had the sweatshirts to prove it.

I had little interest in practicing or playing soccer. I definitely remember at one "game" trying to kick the ball out from a tangle of players and legs, only to succeed in kicking it the WRONG way. During one practice, I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince another team member to kick the ball around the cones, as slowly as possible. My soccer career came to a quiet close after one season.

With FIFA and the World Cup, the culture and traditions are the most interesting thing to me, specifically the chants.

Soccer fans, especially outside the U.S., have a tradition of chants they regularly call out. These chants can be relatively simple i.e. "We're number 1. We're number 1." And even I know about the "Blue Moon" and "Sweet Caroline" chants.

Europeans are an emotionally mature bunch. They aren't afraid of soccer chants that make fun of themselves.

Manchester United has a reported 297 ditties, including the declarative "You're Nothing Special, We Lose Every Week!" along with "We Never Win At Home! And We Never Win Away," repeated with gusto.

Other "Man U" chants are quite colorful, i.e., "You can stick yer (you know what/where)" or multiple chants about the other teams being f*cking "inbreds."

There are chants that ridicule an outfit a player once wore, a player who crashed his car, a player who got 100 parking tickets(?), too many empty seats at a home game, someone's German grandad bombing England in World War II, and being called a "Dirty Scouser."

Other chants seem to be inside jokes, for example, who is Johnny O'Shea and why are fans chanting about him when he's not even on their team anymore?

Some chants couldn't be more clear, i.e.: "What the f*ck, What the f*ck, What the f*cking hell is that?"

Yowza! These Man U fan chants put our traditional "U S A! U S A!" chant to shame.

Just as I was finishing this column a steady, siren-like "hoooooooooooo" noise could be heard from down the street.

I didn't have to check my phone - I know a goal when I hear one.

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