← Sleep Tight Stories - Bedtime Stories for Kids
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Hello friends. Before we begin, there's a quick ad and then we'll get right to the story. It's the carefree days of summer, but we know it doesn't always feel that way for parents. You've scheduled the camps, booked the vacation, but what about all those other hours in the day? Meet Next Playground the active game system where your body controls the play. Kid safe gaming means no ads in app purchases or mature content, and no online chats or friends you don't really know. Playground comes with five experiences ready to play, add play, pass and unlock over 50 games, many with characters your kids already know and love. They even have an the Last Airbender game centered around the Earth Rumble Tournament Practice rock bending while dinner bubbles in the crock pot to fill those long summer days with active play. Check out nextplayground.com that's nexplayground.com to learn more. Hello friends and welcome to sleept Stories. Each week we share a few shout outs and birthday wishes for listeners who help support the show. It's a small way we say thank you and it always makes us smile. Happy 8th birthday to Tyga Lou in Malahide, Ireland. Mams and Da love you so much. We are so lucky to be your parents and can't wait to have even more fun together this year. Love from Mushu, Da and Sala. Happy Birthday to our sweet Mahor. You bring so much love, laughter and joy into our lives and we are so proud of the wonderful person you are. We wish you a year filled with fun, adventure and dreams come true. Never forget how deeply loved you are. Love always mom, dad and your little kitty. Happy 12th birthday to Abram. On June 10th you are off to middle school. We are excited to see your kindness and positive energy. Encourage those around you. Off to new adventures. Mom, dad and Hudson. Happy Birthday to Ilon. We are so proud of the kind, funny and adventurous person you are becoming. Love Mom, Dad. Love Lytan and Oren. Happy 5th birthday to Ona from Seattle Ona. We wish you a birthday full of unicorns and rainbows. You're smart, funny and the best hugger in the world. We love you mom, dad and Luke. Happy 9th birthday Emmy. We are so proud of you. We love celebrating you and can't wait to see what nine has in store for you. We can't wait to watch you cheer at football and completions this year. We love you so much. Love Mom, Dad, Paul and cannoli. Happy 11th birthday Amelia. You brighten every room with your smile, energy and awesome personality. We're so proud of the amazing person you are and all the joy you bring to those around you. Wishing you a year filled with adventures, laughter and happy memories. Love Mom, Dad, Aiden and Oreo. Happy 9th birthday Kayvon our smart, hard working athlete. We love your sense of humor, kindness, sweet smile and everything that makes you you. You light up our lives and make every day more fun. Stay true to yourself. We love you so much. Love Mom, Dad, Ari Kian Green Grandpa and New Shen June. Happy Birthday Charlie. We are so proud of you and love watching you grow from Harry Potter to ancient mythology. Your curiosity and love of reading continues to amaze us. Keep reading, being kind and showing your baby sister how to be patient and forgiving by example. Love Mommy, Daddy and Beatrice and Happy Birthday to our ice skating, fastball throwing, curious and loving 8 year old boy Cruz. We love you so much and feel incredibly lucky to be your parents. Umari looks up to you so much. You're his favorite person. Happy Birthday to you all. You know, every time we sit down to record we think about you tucked in, ready for a story, maybe holding a favorite stuffed toy or snuggled next to someone you love. Knowing we get to be part of your bedtime makes everything we do feel worthwhile. Now onto our story. It is Monday morning and Cooper does not want to get up, but the sun is shining and that helps. When he gets to school he sees Marcus has a flag tied to a stick and everyone starts talking about soccer and the World Cup. Cooper doesn't know what they are talking about, but he is about to find out more about soccer than he thought he would. The corgi who played goalkeeper it started with a flag. Well, at least eventually. Marcus brought it to school tied to a stick, waved it around at lunch until a teacher made him put it away. It was red and green and yellow with some kind of symbol on it that Cooper didn't recognize, but that wasn't really the point. The point was that Marcus was very excited. About had been a typical Monday morning for Cooper before that, a bit sluggish to get up. Mondays were like that for him, especially when there was school. But sometimes also when there wasn't, the sun helped, which was now shining right into his eyes from his bedroom window. His mother called this a natural alarm clock and Cooper called it annoying, though he had to admit it worked. He hopped downstairs for breakfast, which wasn't scrambled eggs, thankfully, gobbled up his food quickly and was bounding out the door before his mother could even give him his morning hug. He did say goodbye as he was running down the street. By lunch the flag was already famous. The World cup, marcus said, still a little out of breath from the flag waving. It's coming. Like actually coming. My dad says it's the biggest thing in the world. Bigger than the super bowl, said Buster. Way bigger. Bigger than the Olympics. Marcus thought about this for a second, Maybe two. Well, it depends who you ask. Cooper nodded like he knew exactly what they were talking about. He did not know exactly what they were talking about. He knew what soccer was, obviously, though it was something they hadn't gotten to in gym class yet. You kick a ball, there's a net, someone wins. He was pretty sure he'd watched some of it once, maybe at his uncle's place. But there had also been chips, so his main memory of that afternoon was the chips. Yummy. Sour cream and onion flavored. By Wednesday two more kids had flags. Ben had a scarf. Nobody was totally sure what country it was from, and Finn admitted he got it from his grandma's closet. But still. The point was, everything was about soccer. People were talking about their favorite players and their favorite teams and whether their country had a chance this year, and Cooper sat at the lunch table and nodded along and said things like yeah, for sure and I know, right? And hoped nobody asked him anything specific. Often he was left wondering what happened to hockey. He just learned all about that and why couldn't we just talk about basketball? Buster and Buck, who were Cooper's two best friends, were also getting into it. Buster was a large, cheerful golden retriever who had very strong opinions about everything and was wrong about most of them. Buck was a German shepherd who was calmer and smarter and usually the one who pointed out when Buster was wrong, which was pretty much a full time job. We should sign up for the spring league, buster said. On Thursday. They're doing sign ups next week. End of semester league games on Saturdays. Yeah, said Buck. I played last year. It's fun. I played too, hooper said. There was a small pause. You played soccer? Said Buster. Yeah. Well, not like officially, but I've kicked a ball around. He had kicked a ball around once at the park. It had hit a tree and rolled into the creek and they never found it. But still, Buster and Buck did the thing where they look at each other. Cooper had seen this look before. It was the same look they'd given him when he said he was trying out for basketball. It wasn't really a mean look, mostly the look you give your friend when you already know how this is going to go and you're going to show up for it anyway. Cool, said Buck, which could have meant just about anything. That night at dinner, Cooper told his mom he was a big soccer fan and was thinking about trying out for the end of semester league. His mom put her fork down. Didn't you tell me last summer that you hated soccer because a ball hit you in the nose? That was a different situation. Was it a different ball? It was a different I was in a different headspace. He wasn't entirely sure what headspace meant, but he'd heard someone say it on tv and it seemed like it fit anyway. I'm trying out. His mom picked her fork back up and smiled a little bit, the kind of smile where she was definitely thinking something but decided not to say it. Cooper had a feeling he knew what she was thinking. He was going to prove her wrong. Probably. He went to bed that night and looked up the World cup on his tablet. There was a lot of information. He fell asleep about 44 minutes in. But what he did see looked very fast and very exciting, and he was almost completely sure that any of those players, if they were a corgi, would have done exactly what he was doing. Tryouts were in a week, and it turned out a week goes pretty fast when you don't practice. Tryouts were on Friday, after school, on the big field behind the gym. Cooper showed up in his soccer cleats, which he had borrowed from a box in the garage and which were, he realized, when he put them on, about one size too big. He decided this was fine. There were a lot of dogs there, mostly big ones. Cooper recognized a few from school, Theo and Gerald, the Great Danes from the Great above him, a Dalmatian called Spots, who everyone called Spots even though his actual name was something else, and a whole group of dogs he didn't know at all who had clearly played before because they were already passing a ball around like it was easy, which it looked like it was, which Cooper found mildly annoying. Buster was there, tail going, already talking to someone. Buck was doing some kind of stretching thing with his back leg that looked complicated. Cooper tried to copy it and nearly fell over. He'd have to work on that later. At home in his room, the coach blew a whistle and everyone gathered around. Okay, said the coach, who was a wide, solid bulldog named Coach Davis and who had the kind of voice that meant he probably didn't need the whistle. We're going to have some fun, just play a bit. But I want to see how you move, how you think, who you pass to on all of that Red bibs that side, blue bibs that side. Okay. Cooper grabbed a blue bib and jogged out onto the field. And then things started happening very fast. The ball went up in the air almost immediately. Someone headed it. Hooper didn't see who, and it bounced off to the right. And suddenly, six div dogs were running after it, and Cooper ran after them. He was actually pretty fast. Once he got going, he caught up to the back of the group just as Theo, the Great Dane, got the ball and turned and started running the other way. So Cooper ran the other way, too. By the time he got back to that end, Theo had already kicked it toward the net. The ball went wide. Everyone turned around. Cooper turned around and ran back. This happened four more times. On the fifth time, Cooper stopped in the middle of the field, head down, breathing for a moment. He was not tired exactly. He just wanted to think about whether there was a small, smarter way to do this. There was a ball coming toward him. He wasn't expecting it at all. It bounced once, then again, and came skipping along the ground right at him. And Cooper thought, okay, this is it. And he pulled his leg back and kicked it as hard as he could. It went sideways, not a little sideways, fully sideways, like the ball had decided it wanted to go somewhere completely different and had simply left. A beagle on the other team stopped and watched it go. The ball rolled all the way to the edge of the field and bumped against the fence. Ah, said the beagle. Yeah, said Cooper. He went and got the ball and tried again from where he was standing. This one went forward, which was better. He started dribbling little taps, keeping it close the way he'd seen the dogs doing it before tryouts. It was actually kind of working. Left paw, right paw, left paw. Something large passed over him, not like a shadow, like an actual dog, just over him. Theo, on his way back down the field, had simply stepped across Cooper without breaking stride, the ball somehow transferring to Theo's feet in the process. And Cooper was standing there with no ball, looking at the back of a Great Dane who was already 10 meters away. Cooper looked down at his feet. His feet looked back at him. He jogged after Theo. The header thing happened a bit later. There was a corner kick, and the ball came swinging in. And Cooper was standing in just the right spot and thought, I'm going to head this. I'm going to head this right into the net. This is my moment. He jumped. He got four inches of air, maybe five, which was honestly pretty good for a corgi. The ball sailed through the space above him, bounced off Gerald's knee entirely by accident and went out of bounds. Gerald said, sorry. Cooper said it was fine. It was not fine, but it was also not Gerald's fault. Then there was the thing with Spots. Spots had the ball near the net. Hooper was defending, and he got right in front of Spots and spread out his legs and thought, I've got this. He has nowhere to go. And Spots looked at him, actually looked right at him, and then just kind of went around him. Not through him, around him. In the time it took Cooper to turn around, Spots had already kicked it into the net. It occurred to Cooper, not for the first time, that soccer was less like catch and more like chess, except the chess pieces were all faster than him and also taller. He sat down on the grass for a second. A Labrador he didn't know jogged past. You okay? Yep, said Cooper. Cool. The Labrador kept running. Coach Davis blew the whistle, and everyone started drifting off the field. Tryouts were over. Cooper was pulling his two big cleats off when he heard his name. Hey, Cooper. He looked up. Coach Davis was standing a few feet away with his clipboard, looking at him with an expression that wasn't quite a frown, but wasn't not a frown either. You were out on the field today, the coach said. Yeah, said Cooper. How do you think that went? It wasn't really a question, the way he said it. Cooper thought about the sideways kick and Theo stepping over him and the header. That wasn't um, said Cooper. Okay. Coach Davis looked at him for a moment. Then he said, have you ever played in goal? Cooper blinked. No. Nobody's ever asked you? No. The coach nodded slowly, like this confirmed something he'd already suspected. He reached into the bag next to him and pulled out a ball. Then he took about 10 steps back and without really warning Cooper about it, rolled the ball hard along the ground toward him. Cooper just reacted. He dropped low, which honestly didn't take much effort, spread his front paws wide and stopped it clean. The coach picked up another ball, rolled it to the left. Cooper slid across and stopped that one, too. Then a third one, quicker, right side. Cooper got that one as well, though it bounced off his paw and he had to scramble a bit, which he felt less good about. He looked up. Coach Davis was writing something on his clipboard. Okay, the coach said. He didn't say anything else for a moment, just okay and the sound of his pen. Cooper stood there holding the third ball, not sure if he was supposed to roll it back or keep holding it or what. Am I on the team? Cooper asked. Come to first practice Monday, said the coach. Bring water and don't be late. He walked off toward the gym. Cooper stood on the field a bit longer, still holding the ball. Buster and Buck were waiting by the gate. Buster was making a face that meant he had a lot of questions. Cooper walked over. What was that about? Said Buster. I think I'm goalkeeper, said Cooper. Buck tilted his head. Do you know how to be a goalkeeper? Not even a little bit, said Cooper. They walked home. The World cup was still a few weeks away. Cooper's cleats were still too big and he had absolutely no idea if what just happened was good news or bad news or somewhere in the middle. It felt like something, though. He was pretty sure it felt like something. And that is the end of this part. Good night. Sleep tight. Sa.