June 19th, 1990

I was nine years old.

Back then my mother worked until 14: 00 p.m., we had some extra classes and we got out from school at the same time, so my grandpa picked us up in Elementary School. 

He got on his black bike. 

My brother sat in front of grandpa, in the crossbar of the bike, in some sort of improvised seat adapted to it, and I sat behind grandpa, in the backseat of the bike. 
Sometimes we changed places. 

He took us home. 
Ridings were fun.
He was so skilled and he drove fast.
I still can remember the wind upon my face.  

He never lost the balance of the bike and we never fell... or, at last, I don't remember it happened.  

Grandpa also had a motorcycle. 

He had worked several years at the Post Office –according to my mom, he saw terrible things, like lots of stacked corpses in a Government Building short after the killing of students at La Plaza de Las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco in 1968– and I think he had just recently retired, so sometimes he kind of forgot that we were just a couple of kids and that he was driving a bike. 

Due to grandpa's skilled driving, once my brother lost a few notebooks on our way home 'cause his bag opened when he sat in the backseat of the bike and grandpa drove fast as hell and no one noticed it until we got home.  

It was fun. 

They were the last days of Elementary School for me. 

In the school there was a World Cup fever. 

I had even recently won a Soccer Tournament with the less athletic boys of my class. 
I was the Captain of my team and my ex-best friend was the Captain of the other team. 
Don't know why we weren't friends anymore, but I do remember that he picked up all the athletic and stronger and taller boys of the class for his team and so I had to made my team with the rest of the class.  

In the Tournament, as expected, we started losing all the games, but I decided to become the goalkeeper and, though the team didn't have the best striker, we made it to the Final Match and won it. 

On June 19th, 1990, grandpa took us home as usual. 

Then we lived in an apartment. The apartment was small, but it had a great view. 
From the window next to my bed I could see the volcanoes Iztaccíhualt and Popocatépetl.
It was a rad view.  

We lived in the fifth floor, so I guess grandpa left us on the main entrance of the building and my brother and I just climbed the stairs as grandpa rode his black bike back to his house.

As soon as I got rid off my school uniform, I turned on the big squared black and white TV we had in our room. 

The cartoon channel had been usurped by the World Cup. 
In Rome, there were playing the national teams of Italy and Czechoslovakia. 

I sat on an old sofa bed in front of the TV. 

A few minutes later, Roberto Baggio received the Etrusco ball in the midfield –the match ball was a beautie– next to one of the border lines. 

It seemed an irrelevant play. 
There were no chances for him to score from that position. 

He gave the ball to another Italian player and then the Italian player returned the Etrusco to him. Then Baggio drove the ball fast. He was so skilled dodging rivals. He left behind four rivals or so. One of them even tried to take away the ball from him, sweeping at his feet. 

Baggio was so skilled and vertiginous that he seemed a player of another planet. 

In a few seconds he arrived to the rival's area. 

He dodged another players without losing the ball and made some sort of hip movement with which he left behind the last defender. With his hip movement, he even fooled the goalkeeper. 

He kicked the ball and scored.  
The crowd went crazy. 
It was a rad goal. 

This is one of the reasons why I started to watch World Cups. 
It had been elapsed almost thirty years.