Messi

Andres has the utmost amount of respect for Messi. So earlier this week, he wrote him a letter.

"Messi one time Im going to be the 2nd best playar in the world" he wrote. He addressed the letter to Argentina.

How's that for respect? Saving the top spot of the totem pole for your idol. Inexplicably, he then drew a picture of Diego Fagundez--the Revolution's star teenager, and Andres' favorite local player--on the back. I imagine Diego would be upset if he ever found out that the highest spot he could hope to attain was #3 in the world.

I'm not sure what caused him to write the letter. He's been talking about Messi more, and he delights in telling people that he is the world's greatest. This will make watching the World Cup so much fun next summer. I'll be watching both with my son and with a true fan.

The letter has been sitting in our living room for a few days and I haven't figured out whether I want to send it or to keep it. I would hate to ship off the original, since it is so perfect, and so Andres. It is genuine hero-worship. And if he does grow up to be half good at soccer, how cool would it be to bring this letter out in 10 years or so, and remind him of how much he loved the game when he was younger?

But maybe sending it would mean more. Give unto Messi what is Messi's, right? And what if somehow, against all odds, this letter makes it in front of the man himself? That would be tremendous. (Then again, maybe it's Andres' way of putting the Argentinian wunderkind on notice. It's like he's saying, "I'll save the top spot for you, but should you mess up, I'll be right there to take your crown.")

The future second best player in the world.

So I'm undecided. And again, I come back to the drawing of Diego Fagundez on the back. It might be weird to send that to Messi.

Tonight, at bedtime, the letter came up again. Turns out Andres has been thinking about it--dreaming about it, actually.

Andres: "Daddy do you remember how I wrote the letter to Messi?"

Me: "I do!"

Andres: "Well I had a dream the other night that he got the letter and he said 'Maybe you will be,' and then you and me were like, 'I can't believe it!'"

Me: "That's awesome! So you had a dream about the letter, and Messi was talking in the dream?"

Andres: "Yeah."

This must have been a great dream for him, because usually the only ones he tells me about are the ones that frighten him. But it really doesn't help me figure out whether to send the letter or not. Maybe we'll keep this one for posterity, and we can write another one to actually send--this time, with a picture of Messi, not Diego, on the back.