How To Mangle Friends and Influence Coaches. (original) (raw)

When the time came to �suit up� for football, Ricky appeared to be a natural. He had enjoyed a bit of a growth spurt and was nothing if not aggressive. The qualities that made him such a liability in the neighborhood and the classroom endeared him to the coaches.

But Ricky�s road to gridiron glory was to be full of detours. A week before workouts began Ricky took it upon himself to climb a tree at the local skating rink to impress an older girl of 16.

That wouldn�t have been so dangerous but for the fact that he was wearing roller skates at the time. He slipped, fell and broke his two favorite arms. He had to sit out most of the season.

The next summer Ricky was working in his father�s woodshop when a girl walking down the street in a miniskirt caught his eye. His attention wavered and the next thing anybody knew, he had sawed off two of his favorite fingers.

The missing digits were not considered a deterrent to playing football, and he was doing just fine during his first two-a-day workouts but Ricky had discovered that he didn�t like football as much as he thought he would. He liked playing just fine; it was the coaching dictatorship that bothered him.

While we discussed the matter, Ricky munched on some doughnuts that he found on top of the washing machine in the garage. I took one too but threw mine away when I found a dead ant curled up in the icing. �Mine�s fine,� he said, helping himself to a third one.

A few minutes later his mother came home from the store and broke the bad news; she had laced those doughnuts with ant poison. She had to convince him she had done this to kill the ants, not him. The family left for yet another trip to the emergency room, where the personnel knew the whole family on a first-name basis.

Our coaches were glad to have Ricky back, swaggering around the practice field without a splint, cast or sling of any kind, but they could see that he was just going through the motions. They yelled at him, tried to make him mad, to make him want to play football. But Ricky had basically fought his war with the world at an early age. He was mellowing a bit as he staggered and stumbled into adolescence.

When he fell of a skateboard and broke two fingers, keeping him out of practice for an entire week, he came up with a plan. He unveiled it to me following a particularly grueling practice.

�Here�s the deal. I�m accident prone, right?�

��Maybe a little,� I allowed.

�All I have to do is get hurt. The guys who get hurt don�t have to work out. They just sit on the sidelines or go see the trainer and that�s it. How hard can it be to get hurt playing football!�

While most of us aspired to be a first-string player, Ricky�s fondest desire was to go on the disabled list.