Why Kids Who Went to One Match This Summer Won't Stop Talking About It (It's Not the Soccer)
Parents expected memories of goals. They got something else entirely.
Parents who brought kids to matches during this summer's World Cup across the US, Mexico and Canada keep reporting the same strange phenomenon: the kids barely mention the soccer.
What they talk about instead: the wall of sound when the teams walked out. The man three rows down who cried and laughed at the same time. The stranger who taught them a chant. The wave that went around the stadium four whole times.
Child development experts wouldn't be surprised. Kids encode atmosphere before they encode outcomes — the feeling of a place lodges deeper than the score ever could. Which might explain why so many adults can't remember matches from their childhood but can still hear them.
One parent summed up what the whole summer seems to be teaching: 'I took her to see a game. She saw eighty thousand people being happy in the same place. I think she got the better deal.'
