Untotaled: Stepping 23 (June 19th, 1965) Bumps, Clumps, Humps, Lumps…Mumps July 19, 2014

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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(Transcript)

Mackey lived right next door to me. He was still my best friend, even though as we got older we found ourselves in different circles.

He got the mumps.

Since vaccinations have come along and practically eliminated this condition, people don’t realize how frightening it was in 1965, to contract the mumps. Not only was it uncomfortable, painful and extremely ugly, but there was a danger that if you didn’t take care of yourself, the condition could travel down to the lower regions which should only be visited by your soapy washcloth and your future wife.

Being a good friend, I went over to see Mackey and keep him company. To ease his discomfort, Mackey’s mother made a delicious chocolate malt with little marshmallows on top, which Mackey was too miserable to consume, only able to take a couple of swigs. So being a devoted comrade, I stepped in and finished it for him so his mother wouldn’t yell at him.

About ten days after Mackey and I shared this dairy treat, I noticed that my face was swelling up. I looked in the mirror and my whole head region looked like the sludge and silt gathering at the bottom of the Mississippi Delta. I felt like New Orleans on a cloudy day.

The doctor was called, confirmed that I had mumps and said I needed to go to bed–and that I shouldn’t goof off and walk around, tempting the little viruses to traverse to the South Pole. Well, my friend Benny showed up and he was so intent on making me happy that I got up to talk to him, which led to me walking around.

Sure enough, two days later I woke up swollen in my Southern Hemisphere.

It was so ugly–not only because of the discomfort. No, mainly because I had to let my mother and the doctor peer at it. Gross.

The doctor wasn’t much help, sternly saying I shouldn’t have let the condition happen in the first place. Then he said I should pack it in ice.

Now, there are many places ice shouldn’t go. I guarantee you, one of them is “down there.”

So for a whole week I was surrounded in ice like a hapless mackerel ending its journey at Fisherman’s Wharf.

Ringing in my head was the final warning from my small-town physician, saying it was likely that I would be sterile because of my mistake. I didn’t have a problem with the idea of being sterile, as far as not having children, but I was afraid it might affect my future possibilities of attracting a woman of my choice.

Even though I can’t remember how my affliction ended, mumps went away, years passed, and as it turned out, I fathered four sons.

I guess sterility was not a problem.

There should be a lesson here, and I suppose several could be derived by the more astute reader:

• Don’t drink a chocolate malt with your mumps-infested friend.
• Don’t go against the directions of your physician
• Don’t allow your private areas to become public
• Or don’t freak out because your doctor has information, trying to scare you.

Tell you what–I’ll let you take your pick. It’s a multiple choice.

My only take from the situation is to keep everything frozen away from my warm place.

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Untotaled: Stepping 16 (October 2nd, 1965) 64-0 … May 31, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog

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Catholic kids had all the advantages.

That’s why, when I looked on our football schedule for the year and saw that Barker Academy was on October 2nd, I was really pissed off.

Being raised in the Midwest, I was not really favorable to Catholics in the first place. I didn’t know why–just something I inherited and was infused in me during my training by my family and community.

I kind of think we hated them because they had money. (It’s ironic that we hate other people for having money as we desperately pursue getting money. Maybe it’s the classic case of self-hatred.)

Barker Academy didn’t have any more players than we did. Matter of fact, we out-weighed them and seemed to have even cuter uniforms.

So when the game started and I lined up in front of a 150-pound kid wearing wire-framed glasses covered with black tape, peeking at me through his battered helmet, I nearly giggled. I was almost double his size and certainly not wearing such ridiculous spectacles.

Yet when the ball was hiked on the first play and I found myself knocked on my backside as the running back dashed past me, forty-five yards for a touchdown, I realized that this little Catholic boy was going to have to die.

I tried everything–overpowering him, tricking him, even tried to trip him a couple of times–all to no avail.

At the end of the first quarter, when we were behind 28-0, fear crept into my bowels. Those ugly glasses that donned his face now seemed to posses the power to destroy.

So in a fit of desperation, on the next play I hurled my body over the line, knocking the kid over, grabbing onto the leg of the running back, only to procure his shoe in my hand as he ran fifty-two yards for another score.

In some desire to prove my value, I carried the boy’s shoe over to the bench to show my coach that I was making a valiant effort. He just stared at me as the referee retrieved the footwear and whistled for play to continue.

I played both ways. That means I was on offense, too. Did I happen to mention that we had none?

It was almost like Barker Academy not only knew what play we were going to run, and had figured out a way to foil it, but had also rehearsed dances and jigs to taunt us every time they threw us for a loss.

Shortly before the first half was over, I ran to the sideline and in deep exasperation, I screamed at the coach: “We need a better defense!”

He gave me that gaze you often see on the countenance of a serial killer, and then rethought his murderous ways, hearkening back to his training of a Bachelor of Education Degree from Ohio State University, and yelled back, “We don’t need a new defense! We just need you to defend!”

It was a good point, though it made me pout.

The second half was no better than the first half. It was the longest two hours of my life, as Barker beat us to a pulp, 64-0.

For the next two weeks, I woke up in a cold sweat almost every night, being chased by those ugly wire-frame, taped glasses.

I know it is appropriate, at this point in a story, to share what I learned from this experience, or to bring it to some sort of hopeful conclusion.

I have none.

The only thing I can tell you is, as I walked off the field, I swore to myself: never again.

 

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UNTOTALED: Stepping 7–Tackling Laziness (September 4th, 1965) … March 22, 2014

Jonathots Daily Blog  

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(Transcript)

Starting the seventh grade scared the crap out of me.

Actually, that particular cliché doesn’t fit very well because when you’re entering junior high school in a new building, the idea of any sound or bodily fluid coming out of your being is completely terrifying.

You want to simultaneously be invisible and also appreciated, which of course, is not only socially impossible, but scientifically implausible.

I had spent the week before school began begging my mother to allow me to go out for the football team. She was afraid I would get injured. This was a maternal prophetic sensation, long before the recent onslaught of concussions and head injuries. What was comical, though, about this assertion on her part was that I was nearly six feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds. The coach joked with her, when trying to solicit her support, that it would be more likely that I would hurt other children.

I whined, cajoled, pleaded, promised, praised, complimented and cleaned my room up enough to get her to agree to allow me to try out for the team.

So September 4th, 1965, was not just the first day of horror in the new junior high school. It was also my first day to go out after school and practice with the football team.

The trials continued when they were unable to find a pair of football pants to fit me.  (This was the era when men’s sizes stopped at extra-large, and anyone who needed anything bigger must order it from the sheep herders of Tibet.) So I wore a pair of tennis shoes and blue Dickey work pants to work out with the other guys, who were in suitable apparel. (They did find a helmet that fit my head, since the term fat-head is merely an urban legend.)

It became obvious to me immediately, on that small practice field, what I liked and what I didn’t.

• I loved the game.
• I loved tackling.
• I loved thinking about what was going to happen next.

On the other hand, I hated exercise in all of its contorted, convoluted and fastidiously constructed forms. After all, every exercise program is really geared to skinny people–even the ones which insist they are trying to appeal to the obese. Their speculations always exceed our limitations.

I hated sprints, calisthenics, too much running of any type, and all the drills which they insisted were essential for becoming a great football player.

I endured the sport for three years, but finally my laziness regarding exercise overtook my love of the gridiron.

Maybe if I’d had the right kick in the pants from an authority figure, or perhaps mercy at the right moments and toughness at others, I might have continued playing the game. I don’t know.

But because I didn’t tackle laziness on the football field, it took me too many years to overcome that gooey, drippy vice that drags one down, draining off potential.

So the next time you run across a kid who has ability, but not much drive, please don’t assume that you should leave him alone.

I was left alone. And fascinatingly enough–it was just lonely.

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