Stories...what can I tell you now..
Here's one.
I always sucked at sports due to having
no coordination and when you have none, you don't get picked to
play..hence no practice creating a vicious cycle. Fine, you guys be
that way...sports bite anyway. Not only that, I couldn't even really
get all that enthusiastic to watch it on TV. What I did like hearing
on the TV was the Red Sox play by play from the announcer's box in
the summertime. That would drift out of our windows as my Dad watched
and I connected that with summer nights. That wasn't bad. But to sit
down and try to get all emotionally involved in football, hockey or
basketball left me bored to shit. I'd rather watch the Winter
Olympics as they had some pretty WEIRD sports. That was interesting.
My friend M. once told me in college,
as a bit of advice, while in bars, that I should learn the
rudimentary aspects of it so I could converse with the guys
there when the subject moved to sports. I never bothered too. When
the subject came up, I fell silent.
Now talk to me about stock charts...and
I'll be chew your ear off! Batting averages? Yawwwwn.
**
In 1979, Goff Jr High had gym class
twice a week for us kids. I hated it, for stated reasons already. The
other problem was that the class had about 60 kids in it as they
lumped all the classes together in order to stuff it into the
schedule. A Baby Boomlet clot was working it's way through system at
the time there. The other problem was that, say, a baseball game we
had, the batting line was about 25 kids long so by the time your
chance to bat came up, it was time to go to the next class. That and
having massive volley ball teams where the ball could never
touch the court as every square inch was guarded by one of the
numerous kids packed onto the courts. Every kid had a chance to play
even if that meant stuffing the court like a subway platform.
In the beginning of June '79, Goff was
getting lax. Summer vacation is on it's way, the last days of school
are here and no one, including the teachers, seemed all that
motivated to get much done. This included a Mr. Charland who was
running out of ideas or games for us kids to play in. One he invented
one afternoon was to take a hockey net, place a kid in front to guard
it while another, about twenty feet away tried to throw a volley ball
past the kid into the net. I and another played the first session of
it and it got interesting fast.
My opponent was a natural athlete named
Dougie Smith. This kid had trophy upon trophy in his bedroom in
pretty much any sport and was well liked by the other kids in Goff as
well. I, on the other hand, was known to Bite the Big One when it
came to competitive sports so when Mr. Charland paired us off in this
game, it was a forgone conclusion about who would win. Why even
bother to watch?
But, I was an older kid by now and had
paid some attention to sports teams, players and how they used their
heads, strategy, to win a game. I still sucked at coordination but I
manage to do one thing over and over again that worked great in this
game Charland invented.
Dougie was guarding the net and when I
raised my arm to throw the ball, he looked directly into my eyes and
I figured that out. He knew, from past experience,
that a thrower would look toward where he wanted to throw a ball. So
I tried this on my first throw, I looked to the left corner of the
net, but fired the ball to the right. Dougie lurched to the left and
the ball whizzed by his right into the net.
Score!
I did this twenty times in a row and
the kid never figured out how I was beating his ass at this. 20 to 0,
a crushing defeat!
When we both walked off the court, the
other kids started to console Dougie by saying..”Ah..he
cheated...he did something illegal!
I overheard this and said. “If I
cheated....then you are calling Mr. Charland a LIAR!”
“Huh? Whaaat? Duhhh?' were some of
the kid's responses. I had to explain it to them.
“How could have I cheated? Mr. Charland was STANDING there the whole time WATCHING us!” I also beamed bold and then said “I'd change sides and do it again” if they wanted proof.
To Charland's credit, I have to say, he
agreed and said:
“Ronnie didn't cheat.”
The dumbfounded looks some of those
kids gave when Charland said this was surprising to me. I got
confirmation from the coach! I won fair and square. But that wasn't
enough, neither was Charland's judgment of the game either to some of
the kids there.
“Let's beat his ass!” I overheard
from a few. They were soo pissed that I, a perfectly useless sports
player should thrash the shit out of one of their favorite sport's
heroes in Goff.
Would you believe this went on for the
rest of the day in the other classes I had? I had pretty much not
given it much weight as I don't care for sports but...I was still
pleased with myself, except I didn't treat this as De-Throning a
local Hero Boy. Apparently I had, for a few minutes anyways.
One class, held by my homeroom teacher,
Mr. O'Donnell, had to mention it to us all as we took our seats. “How
the hell does he know about this? I thought. “Who cares?” I
thought as a well. This news had gotten far ahead of me into other
classrooms for the rest of the day.
I got sneers, threats and other mouthy
BS during the class, to which Mr. O'Donnell had to interject to calm
some of these kids. When the class was over, I had asked O'Donnell
why there was so much consternation over this.
He told me:
“You weren't supposed to win.”
I didn't get that. “What do you mean
“wasn't supposed to?”
I had to be told that I had upset
everyone's certain prediction and had unseated a favored kid. I
knocked his social peg down a few notches and for that, I must PAY in
ribbing and insults and a possible bloody nose.
**
I still suck at sports. I suck at
walking across a floor at times. I had once asked a Dr. about it
since my balance was never that great anyway and had become worse for
about a month during the winter. He had opined that perhaps, I had
this syndrome or another, but more probably just plain genetics that
wasn't about to allow me to rub my belly and pat my head at the same
time. He added to that, “You're getting older Ron...everything
about you gets slowly worse...including your coordination.”
Ahhh...but one time, for a few
minutes....I shone like the sun!
Wonder if Dougie will ring my doorbell
one day and smash me in the face...finally?
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