I'm the savior of Minas

To Carlitos and Luis Escriba Cuya

A company facing bad financial times is not a reason to not having happy employees. There are million of ways to cheat those employees’ minds and making them feel happy. Those ways don’t need money. This company I work for has mandated that every worker has day off on the month of his or her birthday. Of course, no company is willing to lose and the company I work for doesn’t either so the day off is taken from the vacation period of the worker.

Today, Tuesday 15^th, I’ve taken my day off.

I decided to stay in bed a little bit longer rather than taking Morgana to school. My wife did that, as usual. I just wanted to rest longer. I was recovering from a sudden illness that reminded me that no so long ago I almost died from some unknown disease I thought was AIDS. But I still have to write a couple of shitty novels.

At 11 o’clock, my wife and I went to the bank to retire my monthly salary or what was left of it after the bank taking his gross portion of it. On the way home, while thinking what we are going to do with those 50 dollars left on my bank account, my wife suddenly remembered that she had left the stove on. She instantly pictured our rented house devoured by flames. Our few existences were going to disappear from Earth. I run as fast as I could for she faintly reached a few meters before exhaling her last breath. When I got into the house I saw that our food was ruined. I told her: Let’s eat pollo a la brasa with Morgana. She smiled and agreed.

Just a father or a mother can feel what I feel when I see my daughter eat so eagerly her pollo and her papitas fritas. That’s one of the few things that make my day. She also drank a lot of Inka Kola.

To avoid any kind of domestic fight, I told my wife I was going to the office at 4 to play soccer. She agreed. I felt like an idiot for having such a miserable life by her side.

At 5, I’m in the office. It’s empty. Everybody is at the meeting room listening Quico’s directives. Onto a screen the images of our last match are being projected. Quico pauses the video every time he detects an error. He addresses to the player that committed the error and chews him out harshly. Nobody likes the way Quico orders things but there are no complaints about it. Everybody is afraid of him, maybe because he is also the boss.

When the lights are on, Quico depicts on the white board the team line up. He has a plaster in one of his legs because he got injured, apparently, on the match we played against PCO. I see my name as a defender. He mocks at me: He told me I sucked at defending but you have seen how this man is weak in this position. I reply. I was not gonna remain silent. When playing soccer, my goal has always been to defend my field with my life. I cannot be accused of being weak.  

No one in that room could imagine that we were going to beat Geotecnia by 7 goals against 0. Everybody was happy with the score. There were no complaints or reprimands after the match. Quico, who was constantly telling his players not to do this or that, was satisfied and confident. He said to himself: They won because of me. I'm the savior of Minas. We all were confident. Our spirits were strong and renewed. We are dreaming about the possibility to pass to the next stage of the championship. If we failed, Quico will take us out of the company and look for workers who are best at soccer. So it’s necessary to win every match or we better update and spread out our résumés.