Further Frayed

Somewhere along the way in 7th or 8th grade our gym coach Murph The Surf assembled us in the gym before a movie screen and showed us filmed highlights of his gridiron career as a offensive linesman for the triple A football team the Hartford Knights. It only added to our coach's mystique. He had earlier at one point won us over with awe when we clandestinely watched him, while seated in his office, smoke a Marlboro down to the filter in less than ten drags. Was that cool or what? So when he showed us his 16mm exploits we watched with rapt attention. At one point during the screening Murph The Surf let it be known that this was the play in which his leg was shattered thus ending his career and his hopes for eventual NFL glory.

Our coach had the demeanor of a well regarded uncle. He doled out discipline sparingly and kept us in line with whistle blows and an occasional shout to cut it out. During dodge ball games, easily the highlight of my years in junior high school, he wasn't opposed to taking a throw now and then at someone squirming against the far wall with bunched up thoughts of getting hit.

In 9th grade we got a new coach and his name was spelled phonetically Man-duh-noo-doe. He had a hockey background and a stare I can only describe as icy. He quickly let it be known to one and all that he would not stand for any bullshit. He was the antipathy of Murf The Surf and I did not care for him. That year even though Man-duh-noo-doe was the new football coach I tired out for the team. I had it in mind to impress my father. There was at that time in our household a rift between the two of us that seemed irreparable. And I thought that maybe, just maybe, that my showing an interest in sports might bring us closer together.

The initial thing we had to do that first day of football practice after school was run the quarter mile track four times around. I was a laggard and Man-duh-noo-doe blew his whistle at me and told me to show a little hustle. The next day when I clocked in with a particularly fast forty yard dash he scoffed at my time with disbelief and had me run it again. I ran a second time with impressive speed and the coach regarded me then in a higher light as someone with a little potential. We spent the rest of the afternoon running sprints until the end of the practice when we once again ran four times around the track.

Also trying out that day for the team was a girl in our school named Sue who had a reputation of being a whore. She said she wanted to be a Center for the football team. Man-duh-noo-doe demonstrated how a quarterback held his football waiting hands high and tight against the crotch of the Center and asked her if she was sure that was the position she wanted to try out for. She said it was. The coach gave it some thought serious or not and told her this was no place for a girl. She seemed quite disappointed, as was I'm sure our quarterback.

At this point I should tell you that through out the the practices I joked and kidded and acted as if football was just a lark. I tell you this in order to give weight to what follows. The coach put me in the center of twelve players standing in a circle. What transpired was called if I am remembering correctly, "The bull in the middle." It was an exercise in which each of the twelve players had a number and the coach called them out in no particular order and each time he did so the player with that number charge at me, the bull in the middle. Man-duh-noo-doe called out the numbers with swift speed and did so I believe to show me a lesson. The players rushed at me from all sides some times two in the course of one breath. And I experienced in those minutes in the middle an animal fear as I stood and fought for what seemed my very survival. Each player that rushed me I slung to the ground, one after another, and I found in spite myself that I had a taste for conquest if not blood. By the time Man-duh-noo-doe called an end to the exercise I was gasping for breath and grunting and ready to take on all comers and the coach had a look on his face that said, now you are mine.

Man-duh-noo-doe had a way of getting his message across. At one point in his tenure he decided to teach a lesson to a student who had fallen out of his favor. The student was blindfolded and ordered to get on his back. One kid then held his feet down and another his shoulders. Next the coach told the student on his back to try as hard as he could to do a sit up. But the kid at his shoulders firmly held him down. As he did so the coach pulled down his pants and underwear and straddled the student with his naked buttocks in the direction of the student's face. A moment later the coach called out, now, and the kid holding down the shoulders of the student let go and the straining student completed his sit up with his face winding up imbedded in the crack of the ass of coach Man-duh-noo-doe.

By the second day of training my taste for vanquishing opponents that had been whetted in me through The bull in the middle exercise waned and I was once again goofing around between wind sprints. Coach Man-duh-noo-doe spied me doing so and blew his whistle. He told me to hit the showers. I was off the team. When I got home my father asked me how was practice and I told him I'd been kicked off the team for smiling. He was not amused and the rift between us that I'd hope to mend was further frayed. It would remain so for many years to come.