1988. Sigh.

This boy wearing the same jersey for four years made me think of my junior season of high school football. In other words, they both stank. How bad was it? Incredibly enough, my junior season of high school football went worse than my junior season of getting a girlfriend. Imagine that. We got off to an 0-4 start. Not good. In fact, let's go to the yearbook for the scores:

EHS 0 Powhatan 42
EHS 0 West Point 20
EHS 12 Middlesex 34
EHS 15 Rappahannock 36

Hell, looking at those scores now they're a lot closer than I remember. We're talking about a season that went so badly that the yearbook, whose sole purpose of existence is to put positive spins on things (most crappy seasons are labeled as "rebuilding, lookout next year!" etc etc) had a one-word headline to sum our season up for all posterity: FRUSTRATION. Ouch! Luckily for us, a few pages later we topped ourselves with another one-word headline for the basketball season we had put together: DISMAL. Thanks, yearbook staff! Now my grandkids can know that Grandpa REALLY fucking sucked!!! Yaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!

Anyways, after the 0-4 start I decided I needed to do something to turn the team around. I thought about what I could do and figured well, anybody can turn their own game up and tackle and block better; ANYbody could stand up and be a leader for the team, bringing them home with a string of wins, carrying the team on his back with both physical and vocal leadership. Me? I decided the best thing I could do is wear the same t-shirt every day to school, declaring to everyone that I would not change it until we won a game. It was a black Joshua Tree t-shirt, if I recall correctly. Of course, if I don't recall correctly I guess I could say it was the blue wife-beater Emilio Estevez wore in The Breakfast Club. It's called lexicon, people. Anyways, I knew that this bit of black t-shirt magic was the key to reversing our fortunes. So day in, day out I wore it. To school. To practice. After practice, to the Chinn Dome. Home. Monday through Friday. I wore it on the horse farm, working all weekend. No, I did not wear it to church. I think we know how that would've gone over. Yeah, I wanted to win football games, but I also wanted to live long enough to see if Kevin ever got Winnie Cooper. We all make choices. Of course, the losing didn't stop.

EHS 6 Suffolk 20
EHS 5 Goochland 32 5? wtf?
EHS 26 Rappahannock 32 played 'em twice. I guess so they could make sure we really sucked that bad. Great.
EHS 16 Lancaster 26
EHS 0 W & L 32

The losing didn't stop, and my bold stance was getting less and less popular the more I, frankly, stank up the town.

Finally it’s the last game. Final game of the season, final game of some of my friends' playing careers (including Brothatime’s.) Long, national nightmare almost over. Just one more loss to endure. Putting on my pads before the game I found myself alone in the locker room, standing in front of a mirror. I was about to put on my shoulder pads and found myself looking at the t-shirt I had on. We had lost more games since I took my “stance” than we had before it started. I had been no help to the team; I had only made it smellier. I thought for a minute longer, then said “aw, fuck this shit” and took it off, throwing it in the trashcan and replacing it with a fresh, clean white t-shirt.

So of course what do we do? Go out and beat Northumberland. 12-6, in fucking overtime. The final play ends, we had fucking finally won, sheets of joy rained over us as we piled on top of each other to celebrate. Briefly outside the pile walking around, drunk with happiness I found myself in front of my friend Will. Will was a senior, this was it for him. He was a ferocious middle linebacker, one of those 5’6” Rudy types that has no business being on the field but somehow makes 15 tackles a game; most with his teeth. He saw me, his face lit up even more and he jumped into my arms and we hugged the hug of victors. He was crying his eyes out even more than the rest of us, and for good reason.

The previous season we had won three games. Not good either, but for sure a hell of a lot better than one. But the thing about those three wins is that they were all the exact three games that Will happened to not be able to play in. And it’s not like it was one injury forcing him to miss three games in a row that we happened to win; they were three games scattered throughout the season that he missed for various injuries. He played in seven games, and we lost all 7. He didn’t play in three, and we won all 3. We being teenagers, naturally we picked on him about it every chance we got. We told him that young girls throughout the town were coming up with nursery rhymes about his curse on the team to jump rope to. At first it was funny; by about mid-season the next year it was no longer funny. Will was bothered by it to the point of talking of quitting cause of a curse, he was bad luck etc etc. Which we of course convinced him was nonsense. But by the time that final game came around, he was a wreck about it.

Breaking our victory hug he grabbed my jersey with both hands, tears streaming down, and bawled at me “It was your shirt!!! You never gave up on us, it's the shirt you're wearing and never took off, that’s why we won!!!”

Sigh. Never had the heart to tell him.