The Scarf That Counted Back — High in the upper bowl, popcorn salt tickled the air while Pippa held her new scarf very still. Read the full story →
High in the upper bowl, popcorn salt tickled the air while Pippa held her new scarf very still. She had set herself a challenge: find the tiny signal the old scoreboard painter had promised before the teams ran out. The crowd clapped boom-boom, flags snapped, and nothing happened. Pippa waited through one chant, then two. On her scarf, the numbers sat in a strange row: 1, 2, 4, 3, 3, 2, 1.
At last, the biggest green-and-white flag dipped low, hiding the field for one hushy second. Pippa lifted her scarf to see over it. The numbers lined up with seven flagpoles across the stadium, and the crowd read them aloud without planning to. “One! Two! Four! Three! Three! Two! One!” The gates burst open. Ever since, soccer crowds count backward in their own wobbly way before a match begins. If you ever see a scarf raised high in the stands, check whether it is keeping the secret count.
