Xmastime Classixxx
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.
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