What’s going on right now is pretty terrible, right? We are losing people and huddled in our homes trying to be responsible citizens. Georgia and I do our shows on Wednesday nights to give everybody a little dog and pony action. Sitting down to write this isn’t easy today because my fingers all seem to want to gravitate towards the heavy keys.
So I’m going to take you back to a carefree time. We’re going back to the summer before my senior year.
I had signed up for the soccer team at Platt High. I tried to get on the football team. I went to the locker room to suit up and every other kid there looked like my Uncle Luigi. They had more body hair than I knew existed in our age range. They were all twice my size and I knew I’d get hurt. So I gave up.
I tried out for baseball. I had played softball in my neighborhood. I had played wiffleball. How much different could baseball be? The kids in the locker room were the same size as me but they all seemed to exude confidence whereas I was sitting in front of my locker terrified. I went out to the field and the coach hit balls at us.
At us.
Directly AT us!!!
They were missiles!!! The ball was as hard as a rock and it traveled at about a zillion miles an hour. I knew I’d get hurt. So I gave up.
Soccer seemed civilized. It came from Europe where they drank tea and civilized things like that. Turned out I was pretty good at it. I had no idea of the rules but then again our coach seemed to only have a rudimentary grasp of them as well. One of our first scrimmages, I got the ball and cut through the defense like they were freshmen (they weren’t!!) and almost scored. The coach, I‘m sure, was impressed.
We had one game to go before the school year. What a day. I remember it was a Friday. A game in the late afternoon and a date that night. Probably my first and only date in high school. (I was a slow starter and painfully shy)
The date was with a beautiful girl named Nancy. Nancy and I had worked together the last few summer at the YMCA Day Camp as councilors.
During the game I got the chance to play. I was a halfback. I didn’t know the rules but I knew this: The halfback is NOT suppose to ever be within twenty yards of the goal.Did that stop me? Nope. I was cocky and ready to impress.
I dribbled through the field just like I did in the scrimmage. I got to the goal. I drew my leg back to kick. I brought my leg forward to kick.
The goalie fell on the ball and my leg at the same time and broke one of them in half.
The sound of the crack was so loud that the other players ran off the field because they thought the referee had fired his starter pistol signaling halftime.
The opposing coach looked at my leg. It was now at a spectacular 45% angle. He said “Son do you have a trick knee?”
I said no.
He said “Well, you do now!”
Everyone laughed and I got up and ran off the field chuckling at his humorous good-natured jibe.
NO I DIDN”T!
I was lying there wailing at the top of my lungs with my leg at a 45% angle!!
They loaded me into a station wagon. My best friend Billy rushed up to the window.
“Tell Nancy I’m sorry….” I sobbed as they loaded me in.
I laid on a gurney in the hallway of the Meriden Wallingford Hospital for about three hours. My Dad showed up. He yelled at the nurses to try to get them to treat me. My Dad was probably secretly proud that I at least got hurt playing a sport. It wasn’t a stamp collecting related injury or something he would have to lie about to his friends. Also, being there at the hospital with me counted as a Father/Son activity.
They knocked me out. My Dad helped them straighten my leg, The health teacher in school told everyone I would never walk normally again. One leg, he said, would always be shorter than the other, so I was doomed to walk in a circle for the rest of my life.
I woke up in a body cast the size of a Buick.
I had to wait another year before I went out on that date with Nancy. (Nothing happened.)
Both legs are the same size so I can walk in a straight line if called upon to do so.
I still enjoy watching soccer and still have no idea of the rules. Off sides? What the hell. Everyone was just running in all directions. Who was off sides. Off WHAT side?
That’s it. Now I’m going to sit out on my back porch and wonder at how quiet everything is.