Nothing happens in a vacuum!

Everything we have done or are doing presently has some value. No matter how minute or picayune, it all becomes a part of our present being and makeup.

I was an active coach at the Hicksville American Soccer Club for many years in the 1970s and 1980s. Those were exciting times and even now, having had my 70th birthday, I often think back to those wonderful days.

Soccer was not as popular as it is today. There was a professional league, the N.A.S.L. (which eventually folded) with Pete and other foreign stars. But baseball, football and basketball were the true American games. It was said that only foreigners and immigrants to our American shores understood soccer.

I really did not understand the intricacies of the game but I went to my son Adam's practices on my days off. His coach was an excitable Frenchman who spoke with a very heavy accent. He would lecture the kids and they did not understand him. I barely could make out his thoughts, but I translated them as best I could. He was a chef at a posh Manhattan restaurant and when he could not get off to coach the games, I substituted for him.

Coaching 6- and 7-year-olds is rewarding and fun. They are eager to run, kick, jump and fall. Making them a cohesive unit was a difficult task. My greatest compliment came when Pete Collins, the legendary president of the Long Island Soccer League and the president of the Hicksville Soccer Club, walked by one of our games at Cantiague Park and stated "Those boys are staying in position and are playing under control."

We won a few games, lost a few games, but we were a "team." The boys who are now in their mid-30s, still get together and are in over 30 leagues. Last week I received an e-mail from one of the kids, Timmy Richards, who lives in Florida and has a very responsible job.

And now for the story of "How I Got My Job!"

When I retired from dentistry in 1994, I had no idea what I would do with all that spare time. Luckily, my wife, who feared that her over-energetic husband would go nuts with all that spare time, signed me up for a writing class at Adult Education of Hicksville. I wrote a few essays as class assignments and I quite enjoyed my accomplishments. It was fun putting down the many incidents of my life on paper in an essay.

I learned, through my son, Gregg, that one of the players on my old soccer team, Neil McKenna, was the editor of the Hicksville Illustrated. Neil was an outstanding player as a teenager and he starred for S.U.NY. at Stony Brook. The 7-year-old was now an editor and his old coach was retired. I took a chance and invited Neil to lunch at Nickers Restaurant to show him some of my scribbling. I was auditioning for a job with one of the kids I coached. An interesting turn of events.

Neil read my stuff and recommended me to an editor named Kathy at the Syosset-Jericho Tribune. That was nine years ago and I have written a column every week since I was hired in 1996.

The moral of my story?

Everything counts! Nothing is too small! Noting is too insignificant! Like coaching soccer, "Keep your eye on the ball." Thanks, Neil!