How to Speak Fluent Felipe

My dad’s name is Phillip. I call him Felipe when he’s annoying, so like 87% of the time. I have a great relationship with my father, but as I’ve gotten older, it has come to light that our relationship is quite unusual. Apparently, most daughters don’t answer their dads’ phone calls saying, “Whadduppp biatchhh,” and most dads don’t answer their daughters’ phone calls saying, “Wassup hoe,” but we do that. However, we went through a lot to get to this point, like sending me to the Dean’s office because I knocked on the door FIVE SECONDS after the late bell rang for example. I hate to admit it, but I have a lot of great memories with my dad. So here is how I went from being terrified of my father to now being able to speak fluent Felipe.

Phillip Li used to take himself too seriously. And when he did, I shit my pants around him. I distinctly remember when I was like 6-years-old, I had a friend over for a play date, and when I heard the garage door open knowing he had come home from work, I turned to my friend and said, “Just be cool,” like an intruder was coming inside the house. That’s because Felipe used to be a scary man, until we started to ~bond~ over (you guessed it) el fútbol! I still remember when he and Braden took me to buy my first pair of cleats and my first soccer ball. Little did any of us know what we were getting ourselves into.

Felipe began to gain more of an interest in my playing career when someone approached him and said that I could play travel soccer only one year after playing rec. He thought that was cool, so I tried out for the travel team, and made it. However, I was so painfully shy that my mom had to take me to the field half an hour before practice started so I could get all my tears out in the car. Next thing I knew, Felipe started taking me to practice, and stayed near the field during the sessions. I kind of liked it, him watching over me to make sure I was okay. But then he started getting a little closer, like standing on the sidelines kinda close, and then warming me up before games kinda close. Before I knew it, the mofo had become one of my coaches! How the hell did he weasel his way into that one?!

In all honesty though, (I CANNOT believe I am admitting to this) I loved having my dad on the coaches’ side of the field. When penalty kicks started to become a thing, I would get so anxious, I would start crying, naturally, and I remember my dad hugging me one of the first times we went into pk’s and said, “It’s gonna be okay,” when he was really thinking this bitch better save a damn ball. We created a system where just before a girl was about to shoot, he would wave his arm up (to go right) or down (to go left), and I would begin to move in whichever direction he had guessed as the girl was shooting the ball. That system worked great even though it might’ve been low key cheating, it still worked. Until homeboy decided that one game, he was going to stop waving his arms because he decided that I needed to make my own decisions without telling me beforehand. What the HELL SIR. We lost that game.

In high school, things started to change. Freshman year was the first year Felipe was my teacher and not my coach. Needless to say, the transition of him becoming my math teacher did not bode well for either of us, as I may or may not have corrected him on the first day of class freshman year (I definitely did) because he said some DUMB SHIT about real numbers, like COME ON how could I not correct him. Anyways, my mom says to this day that she could hear us from our house arguing in the car from the Palmetto (which is a mile away from my house lol oops). Felipe also decided to give me my one and only demerit in high school for showing up to class five seconds late during my junior year. And in my senior year, I had to ask the boys next to me to ask him the questions I needed answers for because he would IGNORE ME. If it’s not obvious, it was in high school when I started referring to him as Felipe.

I missed my dad when I went to college. I went from seeing him every day for MANY HOURS OF THE DAY, to not seeing him for weeks and months at a time. I had an adjustment period with my mom because she went back to work during my senior year, but I saw him all the freakin’ time in high school. Freshman year of college was the first year Felipe wasn’t my trainer, my coach, or my teacher, just my dad from a distance, and that was an adjustment. I remember saying goodbye to him outside of Campion and feeling so excited to be on my own and simultaneously super angsty about not driving to practice with him every day. I remember calling him when we were still in preseason, crying because I was so frustrated with soccer, and he wasn’t physically there to help. I remember our first fight over the phone and thinking how much more productive it would’ve been if we could’ve hashed it out in person. For someone who complained 25/8 about how annoying her dad was, I seemed to miss him a lot.

I’m not a parent, but if there’s one thing that seems to bother my parents (and likely others) the most, it’s when their children are in pain. I don’t see my dad in distress; Felipe stays cool, calm, and collected enough so that his kids only see someone who has everything figured out. But the minute he shows how hard he’s treading the water to stay afloat is when we know something is wrong, when one of his kids are in pain. It happened when Braden tore off his finger (another story for a later time), and it happened when I retore my ACL in our own garage. Talk about coming full circle when you cry into your father’s chest again as a 20-year-old while he’s trying to console you saying, “It’s gonna be okay,” when I’m sure he was thinking, how the hell are we going to deal with this one. But Felipe doesn’t disclose everything that he’s thinking, thank God because he knows I wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Recently, we were discussing how I would use my extra years of eligibility to continue playing soccer till I’m 23 (lol wtf) or whether or not I should even pursue furthering my playing career. I’ve been overwhelmed with that decision or whether I should finish my career before I exhaust the rest of my eligibility, or get a graduate degree, or immediately go into the job market. Whoever decided I would be able to handle all of this severely underestimated my anxiety. And then Felipe out of nowhere says, “You’re an adult capable of making your own decisions.” WELL SIR, remember the last time I made my own decisions? We lost a damn soccer game! I thought my dad has been holding my hand guiding me to my next destination, but I guess he was actually teaching me how to make my own decisions this whole time. Just when I thought I had him all figured out… speaking fluent Felipe might not be feasible in this lifetime.

Happy Father’s Day Pop.