I rode my bike through the accumulating darkness of a crisp October evening, trying to make it home before the sun went completely down, the headlights of the cars glittering like speeding jewels. Up ahead I could see the bright-white glare of the park's field lights, and under their gauzy illumination, dressed in sloppy black practice jerseys and grass-stained pants and shouting in pip-squeaking voices, a congress of Pop Warner-aged local football teams ran, slammed, push-up'd, and wind sprinted their way to the end of practice and hot meals at home.
I stopped to watch because I couldn't help myself. Just seeing those young gawky bodies going through their drills, their shoulder pads balanced precariously on a thin rack of bones, brought back a rush of memories and sensations from other autumn evenings when my parents huddled on the sidelines with other parents waiting for us to finish up so that they could bring us home for the day, full of sweat and the chlorophyll tang of rubbed-in grass.
I don't know if those were good days, but they were memorable and, in their roughshod way, innocent because the kind of football we played at that age, most of us sixth and seventh graders, lacked the puritanical and fierce machismo of high school ball; like the girls in Cyndy Lauper's song, we just wanted to have fun, whether it was tag, flag, two-hand touch, tackle with pads, tackle without.
We'd gather at the field at the end of the dead-end street by Bob Casagrande's house, a rectangle of land neatly sectioned by a swamp on one side and the highway on the other. Two or three or seven or nine footballs would arc through the air as we ran posts and flat-outs, and those guys who fancied themselves princes of the backfield would practice their slashes and jukes on imaginary open-field tacklers.
Then the games would start. Albert, an eighth-grader who attended a Catholic school and was a born stage manager, organized us into teams. Because we all hung around each other all the time, he knew our capacities pretty well, so he'd assign people to the teams, looking for balance and fairness. For some reason we always accepted his authority -- perhaps because the games ended up being pretty good, with lots of close calls and vintage maneuvers. Because only a few of us had pads, we opted for two-handed tag -- at least at the beginning. But before long, with a mutual agreement brokered by Albert, we graduated to an amalgam of football and rugby, mildly tackling each other, most encounters ending up like rodeo riders wrestling young steers to the ground. After a fluid four quarters of this, with a few dings and dents for glory, we all retired to someone's house for post-game snacks and revelry.
I played my first organized ball at the age of twelve for Mac Donnelly at the Boy's Club. Every afternoon when school rang off I'd trot myself home and, like some medieval knight donning his armor, array myself in shoulder pads and cleats, then hop on the trusty steed of my bike and book it down to the field. There I would join two dozen or so similarly gangly kids, pre-pubes all of us, our shoulder pads threatening to swallow us up. Mac, big-bellied and jovial, would trot up and get us started on calisthenics, and our low-voltage voices would shout out the numbers as we counted our squat thrusts and jumping jacks.
The Boys Club didn't have a lot of money, so the families had to supply the shoulder pads and the Club supplied the clothing, the helmets, and some pads. I didn't get in line fast enough to get thigh pads, so I taped together two Readers Digests for each leg and slipped them in my pants. Our hips pads were curved plastic inserts about as big as a pair of mittens and which gave about as much protection. The helmets were old, acquired from some local college upgrading its own program, and miraculously every head found a helmet that fit. Thus accessoried, we met each day for an hour or so, Mac taking us through the drills, stuffing about ten plays into our heads and running them ad nauseum until we thought we knew them (we'd inevitably forget one or two facets of each play on game day). At the end we'd all get on our bikes and head for home, sweat-stained and shouting dumb jokes, hungry, happy.
It all turned out to be great fun. We ran reasonable facsimiles of football games for the squads of parents who showed up, and we all ate pizza afterwards. At the end of the season we had a rubber-chicken awards banquet where Mac would hand out gilt-painted plastic trophies for "Most-Improved Player" and "The Best Volunteer Parent." We'd dress up in unaccustomed shirts and ties and mash the cranberry sauce into a bloody mess with the peas and potatoes and giggle like the children we were.
But as I watched these kids knock through a linebacker tackling drill, I remembered other aspects as well, darker-edged. I remember what fear tasted like as I faced a kid at least 50% larger than I and who had no trouble railroading over me into the backfield. I remember what real pain felt like as I got a finger pulled out of joint, and then back in. I remember the nausea of fatigue as Mac, extremely upset for some reason over our most recent loss, made us run wind-sprints until our legs jellied. I remember not really liking to hit someone else but forcing myself to do it because I also liked hanging out with my friends and because my father was watching. I remember none of us really liking to hit or get hit. We always compromised, ducking out of the way at the last minute, softening the impact where we could. Only later, in high school, would some acquire a taste for collision and buy into the frantic bravado of adolescent football.
But all in all, an experience not so much good or bad but thick with detail, resonant, ambiguously delightful. As I got back on my bike I hoped that these kids were also having the same kind of experience, that everyone had a light touch about the matter and didn't sober all the fun by laying the heavy hand of "being a man" on their psyches. As I left I saw them all break into a trot around the perimeter of the field. Last laps, I thought; soon, they'll be warm at home and full of dinner.
(Feburary 1996)