As I sat and watched the game last night I couldn't help but think about what could have been. For those who don't know, I was on the fast track to becoming a football star until DC Public Schools intervened.
The year was 1990 and eight year old me played his first game of "Throwback." For the uninitiated, the rules of Throwback are simple:
1) Everybody stands in a group and someone throws the football into the group.
2) Whoever catches the ball has to run through the group of guys to the designated "end zone."
Step 3 varies based on the caliber of players. By caliber, I don't mean skill. I mean class and human decency. I once played throwback with some kids from "happier" backgrounds who said I was down when someone tapped me with both hands. It baffled the hell out of me, because I was used to being down when I felt something break inside of me. Anyway, it was in 1990 that I realized that I would go on to be a great player one day. All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call me names until one day I finally caught the ball and not one of their "too big to be playing with 8 year olds" asses could stop me. All those years of running home had made me fast and strong as hell. Even when this big dude named Bo, who never met a sandwich that he didn't like, jumped on my back, I was still trucking into the end zone.
Fast forward and the year is 1995 and I'm in the seventh grade. I've started to shed that baby fat and the miracle of puberty is telling me all kinds of lies like, "I'm gonna be tall if my recent growth spurt from 4'11 to 5'3 these past few months is any indication." (It wasn't) I beat the fastest kid in my class during the gym class run from one end of the playground to the other. I was still a nerd of the highest order, but football was gonna be my ticket to popularity. (It didn't)
That's where good ole DC Public Schools comes in. We didn't play football on the same type of surface that those suburban kids played on. I think they call it "grass." We played on something a little more stable...concrete. They also didn't play Throwback in the big leagues of middle school. No, they played good old fashioned backyard football and none of that two-hand tap stuff either. You're down when the concrete gets between you and gravity.
I got out there and held my own quite a few times. Football isn't that hard. It's very similar to life in DC. "That dude right there is gonna try and hit you and those dudes over there are gonna help him. Run!" So let's recap. I was fast, and even though I was a hobbit, I could still jump up and grab a regulation rim. I had serious ups. So put all those together...you got speed, you got ups and you have this nerd eager to impress the girls standing on the sidelines. What could go wrong.
Concrete, that's what. I'll never forget the play that ended my career. I ran a slant and when I jumped up to catch the uncatchable ball, time slowed down. I remember seeing the clouds get closer than they'd ever gotten. I had this feeling like "Yo, I'm flying." I remember pulling the ball back towards me and clutching it up against my chest. "Thank God, I caught it." Since I had so much hang time, I looked over and saw the girl of my dreams staring back at me and I had time to envision her throwing herself at me like, "I love you Ordale, you are so fine!" And I remember thinking about how I wished somebody was filming this so that I could send a highlight reel to my college prospects one day.
The whole thing lasted about a half hour in my head, but was probably three or four seconds. Anyway, once I was done fantasizing, I decided to go ahead and "land" so that I could turn around and run the ball in for a touchdown. But a funny thing happened. I was still in slow motion when I realized that my feet weren't touching the ground. I mean, I felt something. It was definitely solid, but it was lacking the density and firmness of concrete. No, this felt malleable. Pliable, even. It felt a lot like cotton if it was wrapped around a skeleton of some sort. Maybe a shoulder or an arm. It was definitely something from an upper torso.
What was even stranger, and remember that I'm still in slow motion in my head, was that it felt like it was somehow rotating me. I wasn't "landing" anymore. Now it felt like I was falling, and sideways at that. Someone had hit me, undercut me in mid air, but I couldn't see who it was...at least not on the first rotation. I imagine it was like watching a gymnast vault at the Olympics or something. Two and a half rotations and a twist at the end (Sympathetic "gasp" from the crowd) and bam! Just as I caught a glimpse of who hit me, I landed on whatever bone connects your butt to your spine. The force of the impact was concentrated on that one spot and caused my entire body to go limp and the momentum slammed my head into the ground.
I didn't have a lot of interest in football after that. A half-broken coccyx will do that to you. I played a few times, but somehow concrete seemed to be the motivational speaker that I needed to just focus on track.
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