WAYS TO IMPROVE THE WORLD CUP

1. There should be new rules about what is allowed when teams begin working the clock to preserve a lead. When a team gets a lead in a World Cup game, it sometimes will quit attacking and simply throw up a bunker of players around its own goal, which makes for a verrry boring game. Fans deserve something more for their money. That's why there should be compartments under the field holding ferocious, underfed carnivores (lions, tigers, crocodiles, people on Weight Watchers diets). When the action slows down to an unacceptable level, those beasts will spring forth to feed on the players. Let's see an offense "hold its shape" during that mayhem.

2. The diving has to go. The only thing that would have more flops than a World Cup game would be a J.Lo/Madonna film festival. There's just something so unseemly about grown men using the same histrionics as a 5-year-old trying to get an elder sibling spanked. For heaven's sake, the way these world class athletes thrash about in such apparent agony, you might think they have been struck with the miseries of Job, when in reality they have suffered no more than a stepped-on foot. Well, OK, gamesmanship is part of soccer, but there should be some sort of meaningful penalty. So I say anytime a soccer player has to be carried off the field on a stretcher, he cannot return until he has had a COMPLETE physical in the locker room with a vigorous administration of the prostate exam. And, so the fans don't worry about a star athlete's health, the procedure should be televised through screen-in-screen. If that doesn't work, we bring back Civil War medicine and its grisly emphasis on amputation.

3. Chuck Norris or Jack Bauer would officiate each game. They would not give out yellow and red cards. They would give the black card of doom, a grim and icy stare and sudden, violent death.

4. Specially bred armadillos would replace the conventional soccer ball. The upside here is the suspense of wondering when and how often the little guy will uncurl itself and scamper about the field.

5. If the armadillo thing doesn't work out, FIFA can switch to a gag balls that will explode sometime during the match, leaving one or two hapless players looking like Yosemite Sam after an unfortunate event with explosives.

6. Teams will be allowed to air national grievances against each other before play begins.

7. When a player earns a penalty kick, the other team will be allowed to bargain with him: He can take the penalty kick, or he can have 24 hours of sensual pleasure with a supermodel from the opposing team's nation.

8. When a team earns six corner kicks in one half, it will be allowed the use of a "monster truck" for the rest of the half.

THE EVEN KEEL

About 20 years ago, one of my uncles suffered a near-fatal fall at his farm. I learned of the accident several days later during a phone call to my mother. About 10 minutes into our conversation, she began to break the news in a duologue that most Southerners will recognize.

MOM: So, you know your Uncle George, right? (We are very close on my mother's side of the family, and my Uncle George was quite familiar to me.)

ME: Umm, we've met. What's up?

MOM: Wellll, he was working at his farm and fell and hit his head.

ME: Is he all right?

MOM: Oh, yes. He's much better now. The doctors have taken him off life support and he's breathing on his own again.

My mother was not trying to be flippant, but there are times when Southern courtesy and its emphasis on not unduly discomfiting others throws you straight into Bizarroland. The bigger the calamity, the more understated its announcement. For instance, had the Chicago Fire happened in Atlanta, it would have been known simply as "that unfortunate business involving Mrs. O'Leary's cow." And we in my family are firmly ensconced in that mindset.

So when my sister called me about two weeks ago to tell me that Mom had suffered a heart attack and was in St. Joseph's Hospital in Atlanta, I instantly assumed a studied calm. I gathered all the facts I could from my sister -- there was no blockage or occlusion, so it was a relatively minor thing that could be controlled with medication -- and began planning what to do. Nothing, of course, that would make a scene.

"So, Mom has had a heart attack," I thought to myself. "Well, she was getting up there, so this isn't totally unexpected. I wonder what she would want me to do? I doubt she would take much comfort from the guys and me hoisting a few pints in her honor at the pub. Hmmm, maybe I should go up there and see how the old beast is doing." Look, each of us keeps an even keel in his own way, OK?

When I got to my mother's room at the hospital, I walked in with the nonchalance one might use to enter a cocktail party. Had I come in weeping uncontrollably, Mother probably would have been mortified and called security, complaining about an intrusive mental patient that she couldn't possibly be related to. She might have even suggested that security shoot to kill. Or she might have written me out of the will right there. Whatever. I knew I had to keep things light. So I asked my mother whether she would like me to read any poetry at her bedside. John Donne, perhaps? Mom simply glared at me like she does whenever I have trampled on the family intellect and said, "Death Be Not Proud? In my case, why shouldn't it be?" And so the visit got off to a good start.

At this point the cast of characters was Mom, my sister and me; Dad had stayed with Mom all night, was exhausted and had gone home. Mom, ever the polite WASP matron, told me that I hadn't had to come all the way from Macon just because she had had a "cardiac event." I told her it was no problem and that I really didn't have anything else to do anyway. Of course, had this happened during football season, I probably would have opted for the live video feed and five screens so's I could keep an eye on Mom as well as all the big games.

But mostly Mom, my sister and I joked around and talked about how much fun the visit would have been had we been more loathsome than we are. You know, a little Borgia-esque intrigue -- my sister and I scheming to ace the other out of an inheritance and Mom playing us off each other. For instance, how much better would things have been had I walked in the room to see a bar graph charting which of her two children Mom loved more at a given moment. My sister's bar would have been towering over mine, so I would have to spill secrets from teenage years to achieve equilibrium. In the bickering that ensues over Mother's bed, we take turns switching off her heart monitor at strategic times, causing her to code out with her head flopped to one side, her tongue lolling out and her eyes crossed. Or we could have asked the nurse to let Mom's dear children give her the medicines she needed ... and then start playing a shell game. "See, Mom, the meds are under this cup. Now keep an eye on it as it goes around and around. Keep watching it. Now pick which one. Oh, too bad. Here, try again."

But unfortunately, we didn't have the stuff for such fun, and it probably wouldn't have been as good as our imaginations made it seem at the time. But the joking did allow us to express our concern and caring without going off the deep end. It allowed us to keep an even keel.