The Day I Knew My Sister Loved Me

If you grew up in a family with more than one child as I did, you were part of a pecking order.  (I apologize in advance to any chickens who may be offended by this vernacular.)  To put it another way, there is no such thing as equality among children, no matter how fair parents try to be or how noble we envision untainted childhood.  Providence and circumstances, or nature and nurture if you prefer, conspire to ensure that the vacuum of leadership is always filled, particularly when parents are not on the premises.  Birth order obviously has an impact.  The younger you are, the less clout you have in childhood until the late teen years mitigates the advantage older siblings have.  Then there is some shifting in the peckological order, but it never goes away.  Adults are right now thinking about their last family get-together and nodding their heads.

In our family, I was number three on the depth chart, ahead of only one brother.  The roost was dominated by our two older sisters, one nearly three years older than I, the other nearly four years older.  When you are in the wonder years of elementary school, anyone that is a teenager seems vastly older, smarter, more powerful.  That was my sisters.  When Mom was gone, they ran the show.  My younger brother and I were just peons scarcely worth consideration in the realm of home life.

There was a constantly simmering feud between my sisters.  It was not pretty.  If you’ve ever seen girls fight - physically or verbally - well, they don’t call it a cat fight for nothing.  (My apologies to cats, of course).  The best my younger brother and I could do when things got hot was stay out of the way.  My second sister was endowed with a forceful personality which collided with the assumed natural rights of the first born.  Still, there was no denying she was a born leader in the mold of the great dictators of history.  If you did what she wanted, life was at least tolerable.  If she ignored you, life was a bit better.  If you crossed her, then life was horrible.  There was more than one literal knock-down, drag-out session when I tried to get out of my obeisance.  Once pounded into submission, I grudgingly toed the line.  In the grand scheme of things, when Mom was gone, Renee was queen.

What made matters worse was that both sisters doted on my younger brother, who was two and a half years younger than I.  He was little, he was cute, he needed attention.  While I was big enough to fend for myself, his adorability unleashed all the nascent mothering instincts of two teenage girls.  Woe to me if ever one of them caught me asserting my rights as an older brother to pick on my younger brother.  Did I resent this?  Of course.

Against the sheer force of the dictator-queen, my eldest sister and I had in our favor that we were rule-keepers.  So, when Mom came home, we had a glowing report of our accomplishments, while Renee and Philip were often found wanting.  Renee simply had other priorities than the rest of us and Philip was too small to do much that was useful.  So, that tended to put Denise and I into an alliance of necessity which pushed Renee even more into favoring Philip.

This somewhat volatile mix of home life left me with the basic assumption that my queen sister despised me, that I was just an inconvenient organism in the petri dish of our tiny trailer.  (Apologies to bacteria).  My oldest sister tolerated me as that helped with the balance of power.  My younger brother always wanted to play with me, while the same immaturity that made him so sweet to my sisters meant he was just annoying to me.  Most of the time, I was isolated in a crowd of siblings.

One weekday evening during this era, Mom was gone.  Which was odd because she didn’t go many places during the work week other than the Wednesday night prayer meeting at church.  I have no recollection where my eldest sister Denise was.  It is likely that dear baby brother was with Mom.  Since I fell into the category of being less than no company at all, Renee had brought a friend over.  Renee always had friends in our neighborhood.  And enemies.  There were no neutrals.  This minion was a guy about her age named Mike.  He had straight brown hair all one length hanging down near his collar, typical of the late 60’s and early 70’s.  Mike was a big, stocky, dark-complected kid and, by virtue of his bulk, inclined to being a bully.  

They were hanging out in the living room listening to the rock ’n’ roll music that would never be played when Mom was home and I wandered up from the back of the trailer out of curiosity.  I knew that Mom didn’t want anyone in the house when she was gone and I also knew that Renee disregarded most rules as a matter of course.  Still, it always fascinated me to see this in action.  Here was an obvious breaking of THE RULES.  I never quite grasped how it was that Renee could thumb her nose at the rules and not worry about consequences.  Oh, there were consequences, but she didn’t seem to care.  In the trade-off between consequences and freedom, some pick freedom, others chose to avoid consequences.  I was the latter.

As I came in, Mike’s alpha male instinct inspired him to start picking on me.  He unloaded all the humiliating things he could think to say about a scrawny and quiet underling.  Why I stayed to endure it was a wonder.  As he continued along this vein, Renee came to my defense.  I am not sure who was more surprised, me or Mike.  Well, Mike’s bullying nature overcame his good sense and he challenged Renee to do something about it.  While Renee was physically the dominant person among the children in our home, Mike was a different matter.  He was imposingly large in my view of things.  He smiled the confident smile of a person who is used to getting his way.

How the kitchen knife happened to be sitting within Renee’s reach, I don’t recall.  But she picked it up.  It wasn’t too big or too sharp, but it was a knife.  Renee implied that she wasn’t afraid to use it if Mike didn’t back down.  How to describe that moment when the stakes have been raised to a crucial point and someone has to fold?  My gut churned with an onslaught of adrenaline.  Even though I had been on the receiving end of Renee’s fisticuffs, did not think she would go that far.  Nor did Mike.  So, he just kept on pushing.

And Renee threw the knife at him.

Now, there are all sorts of ways that could have turned out.  Since it wasn’t a particularly heavy or sharp knife, if it had hit him in his torso it probably would have bounced off his clothing.  Or it could have hit him in the eye, which would have been a far worse outcome.  As it happened, it hit him in the forehead where even a blunt knife at high velocity can do some damage.

I had a fleeting glimpse of the shocking realization on Mike’s face before he howled in pain when the blade struck him.  Blood began running down Mike’s face as he instinctively grabbed the wound.    

“Are you crazy?” he bellowed.

“No.  You just don’t mess with my family,” she replied with remarkable calm, considering the circumstances.

“I’m bleeding!” 

“Calm down.  It’s only a cut.”

Head wounds, even small ones, can produce a lot of blood, a sight Mike was apparently not fond of.  The half-inch gash was leaking quite a bit.  A red line was running down his hands and a few drops had hit the carpet.  Renee found a dish-towel and pressed it to his head.

“I gotta go home.”

“Yep.  I’ll go with you.  And don’t be such a baby.  You’ll be fine.”

I remained frozen in place throughout the entire incident.

Then they left.  I may or may not have ever seen again Mike after that day.  I am sure there was some kind of fall out that both Renee and Mom had to deal with.  I mean, you can’t assault someone with a knife and go unnoticed.  But, that night, there was birthed in my mind the realization that when push came to shove, Renee had my back.

With that realization came a novel idea: my sister loved me.  And still does.

Bear in mind that this event happened about 45 years ago and the only video recording was the one that wanders around in the dusty archives of my memory.  The dialogue in particular is imaginative at best.  I am thankful to have Renee on my side after all these years.

A Crunchy Halloween

In honor of post-Halloween week, the only holiday with dual A.D.A. sponsorship (American Dental Association, American Diabetes Association), I share the following Trailer Park Tale.

Halloween.  A simple costume, a large bag, a trip around the neighborhood in the dark with hordes of other kids, then back home with my sugary loot spread around me to be sorted into three piles: good stuff (Butterfingers), decent stuff (Necco Wafers), and “Anyone want this before I throw it away?” stuff (Black Licorice).  

While adults labored long over fitting lesson plans and parent-teacher conferences into a school calendar, we kids focused on the holidays.  After Columbus Day, the next important date on our childhood calendar was Halloween.  School wasn’t closed for Halloween, but it was a big day.  Everyone would be talking about their costumes and, more importantly, the expected candy haul.  The ride to school the next morning was filled with buzzing chatter about the ghoulish night, in between bites of candy that we weren’t technically supposed to be eating on the bus.

Maybe there were commercially sold costumes 45-50 years ago.  I just don’t remember seeing any.  My own, self-assembled favorites: Pirate - which consisted of a black construction paper eye patch, a bandana tied over my head ‘pirate style’, and a cutlass cut out of the side of a cardboard box.  Cowboy - hat, boots, cap gun; Soldier — helmet, ammo belt with canteen, and some kind of stick that served as my gun.  That violent boy still lurks, well, somewhere.

Simply the best candy bar ever.

Then as now, some folks did not contribute to this annual sponging of candy off of your neighbors.  They kept their lights out or just refused to answer the door.  It was proper etiquette to let other ‘trick-or-treaters’ know about the good spots and the bad spots.  As in, “Go to the trailer 3 spaces down — they give big handfuls.”  Or, “skip the next trailer, nobody is home.”

One year, my siblings and I were near the end of our trek through the rows of aluminum homes.  We decided to stop at a trailer everyone else was passing by.  Just in case, you know, we might get lucky.  The trailer was small.  There was no jack-o-lantern to welcome wandering candy collectors.  A dim light glowed through the front curtains.  We could hear the faint noise of television dialogue.  Our bags were well-stocked, so we had nothing to lose.  One of my older sisters was bold enough to knock on the door.  We waited.  My brother and I were stationed in front since we were the smallest.  Finally, the door squeezed open a bit.  A lean, older man with a shock of wild white hair looked out at us through wire-rimmed glasses.  We automatically burst out with ‘trick-or-treat!’.  He seemed surprised.  Peering at us closely in the dim light, he mumbled, “Oh, sorry, I didn’t plan for this.”

We looked at each other, then back at him, not quite sure what to say.  As we turned to go, he said, “Hold on.  Lemme see what I have around here.”

Will do in a pinch.  If there are no Butterfingers.

He disappeared inside and for a few seconds we heard the banging of cupboard doors and drawers.  Then he was back at the door with a package of Jiffy Pop popcorn, the kind in the ‘ready to pop’ disposable tin pan with the wire handle.  Long before microwave ovens were invented, creative food marketers found ways to make fresh popcorn just a little more convenient.  In its hey-day, Jiffy Pop was the quickest way to convert uncooked popcorn kernels into a mound of hot, salty crunchiness.  No messy pan to clean up.  You just pulled the package out of the cupboard, heated it up on the stove, then tossed the disposable pan in the trash afterwards.  If you liked popcorn and didn’t like the mess, it was an undeniably great innovation.  

We all said ‘Thanks’ to our benefactor, then scurried home.  Rather than go through our candy inventory, the first thing we did was show Mom our Jiffy Pop.  A rare treat.  We popped it right then.

I acquired an astounding variety of candy most years, and that year was no exception.  Neccos, Smarties, Big Hunk, Hershey’s Crunch, some hard candy, some Bazooka bubble gum.  A heaping mound of sweets.  I would be feasting for days.  Mom didn’t even bother to give us guidelines for how much to eat.  It was a once a year event.  Yet, all the candy from that year and every other year never seemed as special as that pan of Jiffy Pop popcorn. 

Salty, buttery, crunchy, hot, fast.

Fitting seasonal Jiffy Pop advertisement

Game On

This is the 2nd half of the story that starts with the Pre-Game Show.  Since I had already started down this narrative trail and we are half-way into the NFL season, it seemed fitting to provide a conclusion now rather than, oh, the middle of March next year.  Pick up your coffee or tea and settle in for a bit.  While still a short story, what follows is not brief as blog postings go...

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It was 10 o’clock on game day.  Four junior-high boys gathered in the center of the field, a narrow street lined on either side by mobile homes.  The sky was overcast, but the air was warm.  Ideal for street football.  My friend Dave and I were one team.  Our opponents were the next door Neighbor Kid (NK) and his cousin (Cousin).  Getting their names wasn’t important.  We had known NK was a several inches taller than either of us when we accepted his challenge the week before. Unfortunately, his cousin made them a nearly matched set.  My whole life I had been smaller than everyone else my age.  Why should this time be any different?  To make matters worse, Dave, a year younger than me, was a bit shorter and only slightly less scrawny.  So, I guess we were a matched set, too.  Still, we were eager to get started.  There weren’t that many chances to play a real game in our neighborhood, especially for kids our size.  But first, we had to set ground rules.  

THE RULES

Certain rules of football are universal: a catch is a catch, a fumble is a fumble, a touchdown is a touchdown.  But in street football, there are local considerations.  Such as, where exactly are the end zones and sidelines?  In our case, the narrow trailer park street stretched about 100 feet between two cross-streets.  Those were our end zones.  Sidelines were the irregular boundary where the pavement met grass yards or fences.  Had to be careful of the fences with their waist-high pickets.  Other rules included: 

1) Two complete passes for a gain in a four-down series resulted in a first down.  Short completions could be strung together for an almost limitless number of first downs. 

2) One running play per series allowed.  It didn’t count as a completion.

3) The defense had to count to 5 before rushing the passer.  This was using the ancient tradition of counting out loud “one-one thousand, two-one thousand…” and so on until five.  The rush count was a practical demonstration of Einstein’s theory of relativity.  When playing defense, it took at least two minutes to count to five.  When on offense, the defenders finished in less than 2 seconds.  Or so it seemed.  

4) The car that was parked on one side of the street was declared out of bounds to keep someone from sneaking through the narrow space between the car and the fenced yard.  Plus, we didn’t want unhappy neighbors ending our game.

5) This was ‘two hand’ touch football.  When the player with the ball was touched by both hands of an opposing player, below the waist, he was ‘down’.  Tagging in certain sensitive locations resulted in an automatic first down for the offensive team.  

6) Touchdowns were 7 points as the ‘extra’ point was automatic.  

THE KICKOFF

A coin toss determined who would get the ball first.  As home team, we called the toss and chose heads.  It came up tails.  We would be kicking off.  Since the road sloped slightly from one end to the other, we picked the uphill end to kick off from.  With aluminum trailers closely overlooking the narrow stretch of asphalt, actually kicking the football was hazardous.  So, we threw the “kickoff”.  With a stronger arm than Dave, I was responsible for the toss.  We discovered something on that opening runback: If you can’t get the ball through the end-zone for a touchback, then give it some hang-time so you can get down the field.  My throw was deep, not very high.  One of them caught it and they were running upfield long before we got to their end.  Absolute speed isn’t critical on a small field.  But, it makes a difference on a runback and both of them were fast.  Their momentum carried them half-way up the street, where we finally forced the runner out-of-bounds.  

A BAD START

Cousin set up a few feet behind NK as quarterback.  We agreed that Dave would match up with Cousin, so Dave started the rush count at the snap.  Meanwhile, I was learning a hard lesson about playing tight coverage on a taller, faster player.  NK blew by me, catching me flat-footed.  Cousin launched a wobbly pass downfield.  NK had to slow down some, but pulled the ball in and kept going.  My pursuit proved futile.  We were down 0-7 after one play.  I glanced at Dave and just shook my head.  I had blown it.

“It’s O.K.  We’ll get it back,” Dave said as we trotted down to the other end of the field.  Losers walk.  Another ground rule.  

Their kickoff was short and high.  Dave caught it and made a few strides upfield before being downed at the equivalent of the 40-yard line, which on our field was the 40-foot-line.  I pulled my comb out my pocket to mark the line of scrimmage.  Dave and I huddled up.  It was early.  We were behind, but now we had the ball and good position.  Our first play would be a classic down and out, something we had done hundreds of times on that street.  Dave was receiver, I was quarterback.  I took the snap and Dave sprinted straight downfield.  Cousin took the bait, turning to stay ahead of Dave just as Dave pivoted to the right sideline where I hit him with a tight spiral.  He picked up a few more yards before Cousin recovered and tagged him, right at midfield.  I picked up my comb and moved it to the new scrimmage line.  The next play was exactly like the first, except Dave made just one quick step to the right before pivoting left.  Again, his route was quick enough for me to pass before the rush count ended.  Another stretch of street covered and the second completion gave us a first down.  

Two plays, two solid gains.  We were feeling good.  Especially me, since Dave was doing all the running.  Time to try a longer pass pattern.  I took the snap and Dave started a familiar route: a few steps upfield then a turn towards the side.  But as he pivoted once more up the sideline, Cousin caught up with him.  I heard NK said ‘One-thousand-five’.  Next thing I knew I was scrambling for my life.  I dumped the ball in Dave’s general direction to avoid a sack. 

Back in the huddle.  

“O.K., time for a running play,” I said.

“Yeah?” 

“You run a slant left towards the corner of the end zone.  That’ll be long enough for the rush to come.  I’ll pump fake, duck under and head for the opposite corner.”

“Sure.  I’ll try to set a block.”

It worked like a charm.  NK came in after hitting the 5-count.  I kept my eyes down-field, and pump-faked the pass.  NK jumped to block my throw and I took off.  Dave set a block on Cousin and I was near the end zone before I was tagged.  We were maybe ten yards from evening up the score.  Third down.  

“Do we go for the end zone, or short?” I asked Dave.

“End zone.  We’ll have one more shot.”

We decided to repeat our opening play that had worked so well.  It unfolded exactly as before: the upfield sprint, the tight turn, and Dave was open at the goal line.   As soon as I released, I knew where the ball was going and I wanted it back.  I had thrown behind Dave and the ball hit Cousin right in the hands.  He already had steps and momentum on Dave, I was blocked out by NK.  Disaster.  0-14.

“Nice pass,” NK said as he passed by me with a smirk on his face.

Dave trudged slowly back to our end of the field.  He had never stopped chasing.  That showed me a couple of two things.  Dave wouldn’t quit and he was as fast as anybody on the field.  But, he was winded.

“You QB this series,” I told him.

“Why?  You’ve got the arm and you’re taller.”

“Not that much taller.  You need a break.  I’ll take the runback.”

RHYTHM

There was no run-back.  Since neither NK or Cousin could throw particularly well, they decided to actually kick-off this time, resulting in a low bouncing, erratic roll that we just watched until they downed it in the middle of our side of the field.

Our opponents were surprised by our change-up, but left their coverage the same: NK rushing, Cousin the defensive back.  We put together a drive by mixing short routes that, as long as we executed, were almost impossible to defend.  All I needed was a step and Dave delivered on time almost without fail.  Every two completions meant a new series, so we focused on completions, no matter how short the gain was.  A bunch of four and five and six yard gains strung together had us near the goal-line again.  We had not run a single time.  Now seemed right to Dave.

“I can run it in.”

“O.K.  Whatever side NK lines up on, just go the opposite way.  I can block him. Cousin won’t have time to react.”

After the snap, I ran right at NK.  Dave did one pump-fake that froze Cousin and darted across the goal line.  We were on the scoreboard 7-14.  We were back in the game.

I threw the kickoff really high and not as deep as the first time.  Dave was in NK’s face when he caught the ball.  No runback.  They had seen a lot of what we could do.  We had only seen them run one play and still weren’t sure what we were up against.  It turned out that they liked going long.  With no playing time together like Dave and I had, they opted to have the receiver just keep running.  Even if that didn’t work, with their height advantage, they were always a little open.  NK was quarterback the first series.  Though clearly the best athlete in the game, he was not an accurate passer.  Dave was able to keep close enough to Cousin to bat away one pass, the other was out of reach of both of them.  They were facing third down with no completions.  We decided to blitz.  Another ground rule: defense was allowed one blitz per series, rushing the passer as soon as the ball was snapped.  Third-and-long.  Ideal time to blitz, we thought.  NK took the snap, but was running immediately.  I could only get one hand on NK as he went by.  Dave was down-field guarding Cousin.  By the time we recovered, NK was well into our side of the field.  4th down.  They were going for it.  They had used their run, we had used our blitz.  We all knew what was coming.  NK took the snap.  I finished the five count just as he launched the pass.  With Cousin’s height advantage, close was good enough.  Touchdown.  7-21.  Both Dave and I were frustrated.  We could do everything right and still not stop them.

That became the pattern for the game.  When we had the ball, our plays kept them guessing.  We methodically moved down the field and scored most of the time.  The few times we tried longer patterns rarely worked.  Meanwhile, our opponents would go long over and over until they connected.  Or, they would scramble for a big gain just often enough to get close to or into the end zone.  They were never more than two TD’s ahead, but we could never completely fill the hole we had dug ourselves into.  

SECOND HALF COMEBACK

When a score put us within a touchdown again, 21-28, everyone agreed to a short ‘half-time’.  After playing for over an hour, we were thirsty and hungry.  Dave and I went into my house where we gulped down some water.  Then, I scrounged a snack out of peanut butter on saltine crackers.  Ten minutes later, we tromped back down the wooden steps of my trailer just as NK emerged from his yard with Cousin.  The morning battle resumed.  An hour and several scores later, Dave and I finished another long drive to pull within a touchdown again, 35-42.  

The end of the game was looming.  We had been at it for at for over two hours.  So far, no parents had appeared to call anyone home, as parents do at the worst possible times.  That would have ended the game and whoever was ahead would be declared winner.  In the absence of parental intervention, we had agreed at half-time that 49 would be the winning score.  We were near that.  NK and Cousin needed just one more TD.  We had never figured out how to counter their height advantage.  I had a bleeding raspberry on one knee from one too many attempts to dodge the rush.  Dave had a fiery scrape on one arm he picked up while scooping a low pass literally off the ground.  We had played on the street long enough to leave pieces of our bodies on the pavement.  All of us were sweaty and winded.  It had been the kind of game Dave and I had hoped for, except the score was leaning in the wrong direction.

As we prepped for the kickoff, I tried to think of something we could do to stop them.  Nothing came to mind.  

“Dave, what can we do different?  I don’t think an on-side kick is a good idea.”

“You just have to launch this one further than anything you’ve thrown all day.”   He paused.  “You can do it.”

I knew he was right.  We had to keep them deep in their end.  The more field they had to cover, the better our slim chances.  I had been QB most of the game.  My arm felt sore and heavy.  But, after all the running Dave had been doing, I had to give it a shot.  I had one more deep one left, my best ‘kick’ of the day.  It was a tight spiral that went both high and long.  With the adrenaline of desperation, Dave and I flew down the street and nailed the runner deep in their end of the field.  They were going to have to work for that last score.

NK lined up at quarterback, so I was on the line and Dave set up few steps behind me as defensive back.  

“I’m going to blitz,” I whispered as a walked by him.

Dave looked up and grinned.  He liked it.

Up to this point, blitzing had given us mixed results.  We had nailed them for a couple of loses, we had also been burned for long gains a time or two, including a touchdown.  Since they almost always threw long, a loss on the previous down didn’t make that much difference.  This time, though, they were deep in their own territory and a loss could put a touchdown out of reach.

They were so far back that NK was already standing at the goal line when he took the snap.  He saw me coming and reflexively took a step back.  He knew I had him, so he launched the ball generally in the direction of Cousin just as I applied the tag.  He had to do that or take a safety, which would give us 2 points, plus the ball back.  Both NK and Cousin had thrown a lot of bad passes in the game, so I didn’t expect much as I watched.  But this time, the ball was under thrown and Dave had position.  He intercepted the ball at mid-field with Cousin hanging on his back.  We had finally gotten a break.  We were less than half the length of the field from tying the score.

We stuck with our short patterns.  Three quick completions later we were 2nd and goal.  This play, I would take the snap and roll left.  Dave would slant left toward the goal line, then cut right back into all the wide open space on the right.  For the play to work, Cousin would have to bite on the misdirection and I would have to throw accurately against my own momentum.  I took the snap from Dave and started left.  NK had to follow me along the line of scrimmage to guard against the run.  I feinted toward the line and Cousin froze just as Dave made his cut to the right.  Dave was so open that I had time to plant my heel and lob a soft floater that he pulled in for the touchdown.  42-42.  At long last, we were even.

THE FINALE

One more kickoff, not as deep as our last, but high enough that Dave and I were able to prevent a long runback.  Still, our rivals had decent position and a chance to win the game.  Cousin lined up as QB.  That meant Dave was on the line and I was defensive back.  I was giving NK some room as we had been burned long so many times already.  NK snapped the ball.  Then a weird thing happened.  After taking just two steps up the field, he turned and Cousin lobbed an easy pass which he caught for a completion.  I quickly tagged him, but the play bothered me.  

“What are they up to?” I asked Dave as we huddled near the ball, “That’s the shortest pass they have thrown the whole game.”

“Maybe the interception scared them.”

“I doubt it.”

Dave looked thoughtful.  “We’ve outscored them 42-28 since their two lucky TD’s.  Short stuff works.”

“Yeah.  But, I can’t play too close.”

Dave gave me his trademark grin.  “At least neither of them can throw a decent pass.”

We fidgeted restlessly by the ball while they continued to scheme in their huddle.  Finally, they came up to the ball.

It was second down, a bit short of mid-field.  With one completion, they had lots of options.  Cousin took the snap.  Instead of setting up to pass, he darted up behind NK who had turned to screen Dave.  The two of them kept going downfield in tandem, reaching me in another couple of strides.  Their forward momentum combined with NK’s bulky leading block, made it hard for Dave or I to get both hands on the runner.  We ended up forcing them out of bounds, which, in this case, meant crashing into a neighbor’s picket fence.  Thankfully, not hard enough to damage either the fence or the runner.  But they were well past midfield, within striking distance of our end zone.  And only third down.

Another long huddle by the offense.

While they whispered, Dave and I conferred by the ball.

“They’ve already used their run.”

“So?” I replied.

“I’ll fake the rush and drop back on pass defense.”

“Dave, you’re a genius!”

He smiled.

Double coverage on the receiver was a gamble, because the QB could run at the end of the 5-count no matter what.  If the receiver ran a long pattern, the QB would have lots of room to run.  But if they were planning a short pass, we hoped they would not be able to adjust on the fly.  

I set up deeper to guard against the long pass.  Dave lined up as if he was going to defend the line of scrimmage as usual.  NK looked back at Cousin, pleased with the way things were shaping up.  Cousin took the snap.  Dave let NK go by, but as soon as Cousin’s arm went back, Dave started back-peddling.  NK did another button-hook, just a step or two deeper this time.  They wanted a first down.  I came up as Cousin threw the pass, but was out of position.  Dave, though, had dropped back far enough to get a couple of fingers on the ball and tipped it out of reach.  The gamble had gone our way.  4th down.

NK picked up the errant ball and slammed a frustrated fist into it a couple of times before setting it back down at the line of scrimmage.

“Great play,” I told Dave.  Another smile.  He had an unlimited supply.  

“Just one more and we get the ball back.”

They had a short huddle.  Cousin set up to take the snap.  Our plan was to have Dave drop back a few steps again in case they tried another short pattern.  That wasn’t their plan.  NK ran straight down the field.  Dave stayed with him for a few steps, then had had to move back towards the line to keep Cousin from running when the 5-count expired.  By the time that happened, the ball was in the air.  As I saw the arc of the ball, I could almost hear what NK had told his cousin in the huddle:

“Just throw it high in the middle of the end zone and I’ll jump for it.”

In that Cold War era, the ball reminded me of an incoming ICBM as it reached its apogee and began to descend.  I had a vague sense of inevitable, impending doom.  This moment was all about height and timing.  The angle of the incoming ball would make it a difficult catch, but if NK timed his jump right, his hands would reach a good foot above mine.  And there was nothing I could do about it.

We jockeyed for position as the ball wobbled down.  As we jumped together, I was right under the ball, so he had to reach over me.  For a brief moment, I could feel the pebbly skin of the top-grain leather on my fingertips, then NK’s bigger hands snatched the ball away as we came down.  I fell awkwardly when one of my feet landed NK’s.  We were literally on the short end of another play and now on the short end of the final score as well, 42-49.  That day, there was to be no dramatic underdog victory.  

I sat on the ground while Cousin and NK hooted and celebrated.  Dave walked over and offered a hand to pull me up.  Once I was back on my feet, Dave spoke.

“It was a good game.  We stayed with them the whole way.”

“Yep.  They were just too stinking tall.”

“We should tell them, ” he replied.

“That they were too tall?”  Dave knew I was only half-serious.

We walked over and congratulated our opponents.

“Good game, guys.”

“Thanks.  You guys played good, too.”  Gracious in victory.  “Maybe we can do it again next time my cousin is over.”

“Sure.”

Then they headed into their trailer and left us standing there.  

“I better get home,” Dave said. 

“Okay.  See you later.”

He turned up the cross-street that led to where he lived one block over.  I took my ball and slowly mounted the steps into the trailer.  The adrenaline gone, I felt suddenly bone-tired.  Once inside, I saw that it was nearly 1 o’clock in the afternoon.  

The rematch was not to be.  In fact, I never saw the neighbor’s cousin again.  As often happened in the trailer park, our new neighbors were transient and moved on before we did.  Dave and I continued to hang out together until our family pulled up roots one more time and headed to the plains of Wyoming.  For a kid that was always a foot short and 40 pounds too light, pickup games in the street were the closest I ever came to competitive football.  And for three hours on a balmy Saturday, it was as real to the four of us as any game ever played.

Pre-Game Show

A new family moved in next door.  That happened a lot in trailer parks.  Homes with wheels

never bond fully with the ground they sit on.  Our family was a prime example.  In the ten years we were part of that nomadic world, we moved three times, our trailer towed to a new location in hopes that the change in surroundings would somehow make life a little bit better.  However, each trailer park was much like all the others.  Though the lure of slightly better rental rates was hard to resist for those counting every dollar.  Given the transient nature of the trailer park population and that most of our social life revolved around church, I usually didn’t find out much about my neighbors, even those less than thirty feet away.  Which made the question that inspired the Good Samaritan story particularly relevant: “Who is my neighbor?”  Often, I really didn’t know.

In this case, I was destined to know more than the bare minimum, which was that the trailer next door was occupied.  It turned out that the new neighbors had children, one of whom was a boy about my age.  Unless I had to interact with them directly, adults were mostly relegated to faceless anonymity.  But, seeing kids my age going in and out of the trailer next door piqued my interest.  There was no formal introduction where our clan trooped over and knocked on their door with a house-warming gift.  They came and went for some time without my awareness extending beyond the additional facts that there were a total of three children, a boy younger than the one my age, and a sister who appeared to be a year or two older.

Besides, by the time this kid moved in, I already had a friend.  For me, one friend at a time always worked best.  Because I knew what it was like to be the third person.  Worse yet, I had a little brother who was often foisted on me by Mom as the third person.  So, while two guys could almost always agree on a course of adventure, a third person always complicated things.  Either they wanted to do something different, or, in the case of younger siblings, were an effective damper on your plans by virtue of their youth and inexperience.  Being the third person in those circumstances is no fun, and having a miserable third wheel along is no picnic, either.

Like every friend I had during those trailer park years, this friend was about a year younger than me.  David was affable with a ready smile under a mop of thick, straight brown hair that always seemed to be hanging in his eyes.  He was not self-conscious about the amazing overbite he had, which made me both more aware of and less embarrassed by my own protruding top teeth.  We spent a lot of time together.

Something happened to alter that neighborhood dynamic one Saturday when David came over to play.  He and I were in the street tossing my football back and forth.  Street football was a staple outdoor activity for us.  Unlike baseball or basketball, football required only the ball, not a basketball hoop or a bat and gloves and a large field.  The two of us could wile away hours working out passing routes on the uneven asphalt.  

That morning, while we were moving our imaginary team smartly down the field with well-timed down-and-outs or slants, the neighbor kid came out to observe.  I was sure he had seen us do this before in the weeks that had lapsed since they arrived, but had never seen him actually appear interested.  This time he stood watching intently for a couple of minutes.  The next time we paused near his fence, he spoke.  It was the first time I had heard his voice.

“Hey.”

We looked up from the complex play diagram we were scratching out on the street with a small rock.

“My cousin is going to be over next Saturday.  You guys want to play a game?”

To retain any sense of self-respect, both David and I knew the answer to that.  We looked at each other then back at our challenger and said, “Sure.”

“Okay. See you next week.”

That was it.  He turned to go back into his house.  We had taken a couple of steps closer to his yard during this brief encounter.  Close enough for me to see that he was several inches taller than I was and his build contrasted with my painfully thin frame.  The way he bounded up the steps into his trailer was not reassuring, either.  David, though not skeletal like me, was even shorter than I.  He cocked his head in the direction of the recently closed door.

“If his cousin is as big as he is, we could be in serious trouble.”

I nodded my head in solemn agreement.  My neighbor had seemed cooly confident when talking to us.  And we only had a week to prepare.

While the next seven days would include compulsory church and school activities, I knew what my focus would be: that window of daylight between the time I got home from school and when it turned dark outside.  It was to be a week of feverish preparation for The Big Game.

You ought to be ashamed

This is worth getting out of bed for.

The aroma of bacon in the morning takes me back to childhood school days.  Mom would

come into the bedroom I shared with my brother and wake us.  
“Time to get up, boys.”
At that moment, groaning and going back to sleep was what I wanted.  Then, the smell of bacon wafted in the door.  It was enticing in a way that no maternal pleading could match.  We didn’t have bacon all that often.  It was a treat, really.  But it sure made getting out of bed a whole lot easier.

I remember one morning in particular when I was in about 5th grade.  I had gotten dressed and headed out to the front of our trailer, following the scent of bacon.  Our compact eight foot square kitchen-dining room had just enough space opposite the stove and sink for a small circular table that we used for most meals.  The bacon was crisp and on my plate, bread was in the toaster, an egg was sizzling pleasantly in the skillet where the bacon had been fried.  A single mom had little time to spare on weekday mornings with four kids to send off to their various destinations before she left for work.  So she often started breakfast cooking, then we would have to finish the job.  If you want to eat, there is a strong incentive to keep an eye on the stove and the toaster.  The toast popped up and I slathered some butter on it while the egg neared over-medium perfection.  Mom disappeared to finish getting ready for work.

[As an aside, I suspect I am not the only person who finds a delightful irony in the 21st century ‘discovery’ that eggs and meat and butter and other fats are not nearly the evil they were thought to be in the cholesterol-crazed 80’s and 90’s.  Fascinating how science has come nearly full circle and found that the classic breakfast my mom fed me was actually quite beneficial, particularly for a growing boy who needed proteins and fats and carbohydrates in large quantities.]

Soon my egg was done.  I turned off the gas burner and scooped it up with the spatula to transfer it to my plate.  Unfortunately, the same bacon grease that made it easy to get the egg out of the skillet was just as effective in reducing the friction co-efficient between the egg and my plate.  The egg kept right on going when it hit the plate, sliding off and plummeting down to the floor at my feet.  A yellow explosion of yolk with bits of grease-coated egg-white splattered my shoes and the linoleum floor.  In a frozen moment of time, several realities hit me:  I had a mess to clean up;  I had wasted food; there wasn’t time to cook another egg; I had barely enough time to eat breakfast before I had to leave for the bus stop; my morning routine was shattered.  

Did that just come out of MY mouth?

And I swore like a sailor.  

Well, maybe not precisely as a sailor would have sworn if a sailor had been in my egg-besotted sneakers, because I hadn’t been around sailors enough to know how one swore.  What I did swear like was a school-aged boy who not only learned formal English in school, but during recess also acquired a repertoire of colorful words not found in the grammar book.  In fact, the group of boys I hung out with had developed a skill of seeing how many different swear words they could string together without taking a breath.  So, what goes in must come out.  Or, as the Man from Galilee said, “Out of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 15:18).  My anger and frustration had burst out in colorful language matching the colorful mess on the floor.  

As I turned to put my plate on the table, I noticed Mom had reappeared in the front of the trailer.  I looked at her and she looked at me.  Instinctively, instantly, I knew I done something far worse than dumping my egg on the floor.  I had disappointed Mom.  A deep sorrow welled up in my gut.  I was ashamed.  Ashamed that Mom had heard those words; words that no-one should ever hear, but especially not Mom.  Ashamed that the boy that could recite his Sunday School memory verse without fail was exposed as a sham.  Tears began to roll down my face, I crumpled into a chair head in hands and the only words I could get out of my mouth were “I’m sorry.”  Over and over.

Mom’s just know things.  It is why they are mothers.  She put a hand on my shoulder and quietly said, 

“It’s only an egg.”  

We both knew it was more than just an egg, but that short phrase let me know that she still loved her boy, even in his fallen state.  Then, she told me to eat the rest of my breakfast while she cleaned up my mess.  The act of biting and chewing calmed my aching heart.  Mom wiped up the egg with an efficiency I marveled at while I sniffled over my hasty meal.

Not much more was said about that outburst of mine.  I had a school bus to catch, Mom had to get to work.  But I never forgot.

Over forty years later, when movies and songs and books and magazines and electronic text are heavily weighted with the profane, my childhood incident seems so trivial.  Shame is an outdated notion in this era of self-actualization where being true to yourself is more important than who you might offend in the process; where people flaunt their indiscretions on talk shows and Facebook.  But it seems to me that in ridding ourselves of shame, we have lost some fundamental dignity, both in how we view ourselves and how we treat others.

Those unprintable words I learned in childhood are etched deeply into my neural network.  I still have moments of muttering #&@!% in moments of anger or frustration.  The sad truth is, there are things I have done since that day that are far more shameful.  The best inside of me is still tainted.  Yet, I am grateful that those experiences have not cauterized my conscience, but instead have been lessons in forgiveness like that early one Mom taught me.  And forgiveness is nothing to be ashamed of.

Monopoly, Munchies and Mayhem

Ah, summer.  When I was 9 or 10, summer was a time of simple pleasures which didn't get complicated until a few years later.  School was out, daylight hours seemed unending, and I could spend the night at a friend’s house.  During the school year, sleepovers weren’t possible.  There was homework and chores and ‘school the next day’ and Saturday baths for Sunday church.  Adult reasoning never resonated with me.  It just translated into ‘NO’.  Homework more important than a sleepover?  Really?  

So, while we contented ourselves with scattered Saturday or Sunday afternoon visits during the school year, as June approached, my friends and I would start scheming.  Most of my sleepover time was spent at best buddy Darwin’s house.  There were two events we spent weeks planning:  The annual church trip to Disneyland in February and sleepovers at his house in the summer.  He spent the night at my house a few times, too.  But I remember best a Friday night at his house.

The key ingredients to our sleepover festivities were food and games.  The 1960’s were a golden era of board games and snacks, before television swallowed up family game time and health cultists labeled ‘junk food’ as the great evil of the 20th century.  Darwin and I had solemnly committed to not only convincing our parents that a rare reprieve from eating what was good for us would do no lasting harm, but getting them to fund our feast as well.

Mom dropped me off early that Friday evening.  Sometime after dinner we headed out to our enclave.  Darwin’s dad had set up their massive family tent in the front yard for us to camp out in, probably to keep the noise out of the house.  For us, it meant more floor space than Darwin’s laundry closet bedroom and independence.  After we pooled our resources, the menu looked something like this:

Taco Flavor Doritos

Cinnamon Pop Tarts

Hires Root Beer

Pringles potato chips.

Chips Ahoy cookies

Nesbitt’s Orange Soda

We had two simple objectives for an enjoyable evening: to consume all of our treats before morning and to play games until sunup.  Some of our choices for games were Aggravation, Sorry, Life and Monopoly.  We may have played some of the other games, but Monopoly was our perennial favorite and a sleepover meant enough time to enjoy it fully.

With only two people playing Monopoly, it can take many hours to play out to the bitter end where one person finally runs out of money.  There are a number of strategies for prolonging the agony: mortgaging property to pay debt; selling properties to pay debt; swapping properties to pay debt; staying in jail to avoid landing on another high-rent property.  

Sort of like the real world.

As the night wore on, the combination of sugar, starch, artificial colors and sleep deprivation began to have their effect.  Everything became funny.  Who won or lost the game didn’t matter as much as making it last as long as possible.  We could have easily passed for intoxicated.  Which we were, on life.  We were doing what we wanted for as long as we wanted and no-one was telling us to stop or be quiet or trying to take our hoard of treats away.  Every hour we would switch to a new entrée - a bag of chips, another package of Pop Tarts, some cookies.  

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, before dawn but well after midnight, the last dollar was drained out of one of our Monopoly accounts.  There was no way to pay the rent — no loans, no property, nothing.  All was gone.  Impulsively, one of us threw some Monopoly money in the air.  Then, the two of us just went berserk.  The player tokens, chance cards, houses and hotels, the rest of the money went flying into the air and all over the tent.  We laughed hysterically as we continued to fling stuff everywhere.  For a few minutes, the inside of the tent resembled a well-shaken snow globe.  Eventually, our hilarity subsided enough so we could begin the recovery effort.

We spent a good half hour scrounging around the tent on our Monopoly search and rescue.  To our sleep-deprived brains, even cleaning up our own mess was fun.  We crawled over un-used sleeping bags, scrounged through empty snack food containers to re-assemble the game.  Finally, we went outside the tent as the sky grew lighter in the east.  We felt triumphant.  We had conquered sleep.  There was nothing left to do but roll up sleeping bags and pack the remains of our stuff back into the house.  We managed to find a few more Monopoly pieces as we emptied the tent.

We crept through the solemn quiet of the house.  Darwin’s stuff went back into his room, mine into a tidy stack in the living room.  To our delight, we were perched happily on the living room couch when Darwin’s mom came out to fix breakfast.  

“Are you boys hungry?”

I looked at Darwin and he at me.  We both groaned and shook our heads.  The exotic binge of the past several hours churned heavily in our guts.  So, we sat on the couch while the rest of the family ate breakfast.  Saturday morning cartoons played hypnotically on the flickering black and white screen of the television.  

And that is where they found us after breakfast: half leaning against each other, heads flung back, mouths hanging open, eyes sealed shut, snoring deeply, the contented victims of our marathon junk food Monopoly fest.

MONOPOLY: Source of my first and best lessons in economics and finance.

A Very Long Day

I was reminded of an episode from my childhood recently while reading aloud “Mary Emma and Company”, the ongoing saga of Ralph Moody that took place about 100 years ago.  The Moody family had just moved from Colorado to Boston, Massachusetts.  On their first day in town, thirteen-year-old Ralph is at a local grocer trying to get a job.  When Ralph tells his prospective employer how many hours a day he would be willing to work, the grocer informs him that the truant officer would not think too highly of that.  Ralph isn’t quite sure what a truant officer is, but he assumes that means he will have to go to school.  When they were living in Colorado and struggling to make ends meet after Ralph’s father died, his mother would let him stay out of school if he had a job earning more than 50 cents a day!  No truant officers came calling.

While recognizing that much good has come from child labor laws and public education, reading Ralph Moody’s story, I am struck by how much he gained from his early exposure to work.  Ralph’s mother wisely struck a balance between making sure Ralph had an education while allowing him to be a resourceful entrepreneur.  Though his formal education in his elementary years was spotty, what Ralph learned in the ‘school of hard knocks’ more than compensated.  I am hard-pressed to think of a book about childhood, fictional or not, historical or contemporary,  where a school boy actually enjoyed being in school.  Rather, it is almost universally portrayed as something to be escaped from.  This makes me wonder why it is that when children are miserable in school, the grown-ups who run the system assume there is something wrong with the child.  As an elementary aged school boy, I experienced that desire to escape on a regular basis.  It wasn’t until about age 11 that I made my first attempt.

When I was in 6th grade, my closest neighborhood friend was Edward Moss.  He was a few months younger than me, which put him in 5th grade.  His older brother Tracy was actually in my class.  There was also a third Moss brother, who by then was in Junior High and had even less appreciation for school.  

It was a time in the school year when the weather was balmy and the memory of summer freedom still fresh.  The Moss boys and I were grousing about school one afternoon when the oldest brother suggested a novel solution: why not just stay home?  To my innocent mind, this was an astounding notion.  How could we NOT go to school?  As it turned out, quite easily.  Although we were not much more than a mile from school, a classic yellow Bluebird school bus wheezed its way to our trailer park every school day, no doubt to ensure that smaller children would make it safely to the hallowed halls of learning.  Still, walking was an option we often used as preferable to the noisy confines of the bus.  

We came up with a deceptively simple plan.  I would meet the Moss brothers at the entrance to the trailer park where the bus stopped.  Of course, there would be other kids gathered there.  We would tell them we were walking to school.  Then, on the way, we would detour into one of our favorite hang-outs — the old cemetery that was just a block or so down the street from the trailer park entrance.

That is just what we did.  It was astoundingly easy.  Once out of eye-shot of the bus stop, we dashed into the cemetery.  Then, we ducked behind a large mausoleum in the middle of the grounds and watched as the bus came and went.

At first, our freedom was glorious.  We wandered around, reading epitaphs, engaged in nonsensical conversation.  While all those other losers were cramped in a hard chair behind a desk, we were breathing deep the fresh air wafting through the old pepper trees and musty marble of the cemetery.  That is, until the oldest Moss boy pulled out a handful of cigarettes from his pocket.  He had snagged them from his Dad’s supply.  Today was to be a day for breaking rules.  So, we all in turn lit up.  I had seen enough public service announcements to know smoking was BAD.  In spite of that, peer pressure was highly effective.  I tried a puff or two.  Even though these were a filtered menthol brand, I can still recall the mint green label, the experience was decidedly un-mint-like.  For a boy prone to asthma and allergies, breathing smoke was a poor fit.  I never tried smoking again.

No, it never was...

That diversion got us to what we assumed must be about lunch time.  None of us had a watch, but the sun was high overhead.  Since our master plan had not gone beyond our initial escape, we had not anticipated such basic needs as food and water.  I had brought a brown bag lunch.  On that particular day, I was the only one so equipped.  Whether we had money or not didn’t matter.  In our present circumstance we couldn’t go anywhere in the public eye.  By the time my meagre lunch was divided among our truant band, it didn’t make much of a meal.  I wasn’t particularly hungry, in any case.  The combination of lurking anxiety about being caught and the after-taste from smoking had effectively dampened my appetite.

Boredom crept in with the oppressive warmth of the afternoon sun, the only possible explanation for what we did next.  We headed out to the street by the trailer park entrance, looking for relief from our monotony.  By the entrance was a rectangular pit in the ground built of cinder blocks and covered by heavy gauge steel plating.  Cut into the steel was a hinged trap door which was conveniently unlocked, but steel plating is heavy.  We managed to pry it up enough to get a grip and, with all of us lifting, got the door open.

Tracy — always good for a reckless endeavor — volunteered to climb down into the pit for a look.  He had just dropped down onto the concrete floor several feet below when someone hissed:  “There’s a car coming out of the park!”

We dropped the door with a thunderous clang, leaving Tracy inside.  The three of us made a mad dash across the street and flung ourselves onto the ground behind scanty cover of brush and rock.  The car creeped up the drive and turned toward town.  Once it passed out of sight, we clambered to our feet, only to see another car coming up the street in our direction.  Again, we waited.  The ground was warm and the smell of dust and sage and sweat began to mingle as we lay there with the sun beating down.  Car number two finally disappeared into the park.

Cautiously, we raised our heads and scanned the street closely before dashing across to see about Tracy.  Again, we pried the door up, taking a bit longer since we were missing Tracy’s help, who could barely reach the door from below.  Tracy’s face glowered up at us, dripping with perspiration.  

“What took you so long?  I’m roasting down here!” 

Those were his kinder thoughts. The rest of what he said is unprintable: “#$%&@“ and variants thereof.

We hoisted the apoplectic Tracy out of the hole.  Peering in, I saw a large pipe crossing the length of the pit with a complicated steel contraption bolted in the middle, part of the system providing domestic water and fire protection for the park.  Hardly worth the trip across the street.

The interminable afternoon drug on for another couple of hours.  We wandered around a nearby orange grove for awhile, tossing oranges at each other and eating a few to ease our hunger.  Finally, we heard the bus making its return trip.  We could safely end the extended game of hide-and-seek where apparently nobody was interested in finding us.  My long day was over.  It would be a much longer time before I attempted to skip school again.  

Certainly, I was NO ordinary boy.  But, just what planet I came from is still open to debate.

An Unexpected Prize

I had three sets of friends as a child: at school, in the trailer park, at church.  Their paths rarely crossed.  I saw my church friends on Sundays and Wednesday nights, school friends at school, neighborhood friends after school during the week and on Saturdays.

Part of this was due to the odd coincidence that both my neighborhood and church friends were at least a few months younger than I was, so ended up in a different school grade, resulting in different classes and sometimes different schools entirely.  The other cause of this segregation was intentional.  Oh, I knew I was supposed to evangelize my non-churched friends and I did invite them once or twice to special events such as Vacation Bible School.  But, I could never picture my friends from school or in the trailer park really understanding church, at least as I experienced it.  Maybe I sold them short, maybe I was a coward, maybe I knew I would be mortified if my school friends ever found out exactly what went on at that Pentecostal church.

Still, I know that the better parts of my character were formed largely by those faithful servants in that little church.  As a child, I was oblivious to any church politics that I encountered later as a teen and adult.  I just saw grown ups who were on their way to heaven and who were doing their best to bring me along, too.

One such saint taught the Junior Boys Sunday School class.  Junior Boys, as defined by the Assemblies of God Gospel Publishing House curriculum, were in 5th and 6th grade.  There was, no doubt, a Junior Girls class, too.  Maybe we even shared the same curriculum.  This was before ‘Tweens’ or ‘Preteens’ were invented.  We were ten to twelve years old, eager for mischief, easily bored.  Our core group of boys had been in church together for a few years, so we knew the Bible stories and the Sunday School drill: be on time, bring your Bible, recite that week’s scripture verse from memory.  So, by the time Sister Smithson got to us, we had worn out a couple of well-intentioned volunteers with our energetic antics.  

Yes, we called her Sister Smithson.  That was how adults were addressed in church in those days.  The men were Brothers and the women were Sisters, though kids were still called by their first name.  It gave a certain family atmosphere to church that I miss.

In any case, Sister Smithson had some advantages that the other teachers lacked.  First, she was the mother of one of our cohort.  “Ah, man, it’s your mom!”  That let the air out of one of our hot air balloons immediately.  Second, she had a certain quiet dignity that evoked respect from this disrespectful group of boys.  Sister Smithson was, in whatever vague understanding I had of the term, a lady.  Soft-spoken, tastefully dressed, patient.  Finally, she somehow knew the way to a boy’s heart: Contests, with prizes.  Say what you will about bribing children to learn, it works.  

One such contest involved cars.  Although her son was never as much a fan of Hot Wheels as I and some of the other boys were, Sister Smithson designed a racing contest.  She drew a simple oval race track on a piece of poster board.  The track was divided into segments, perhaps one for each week of the Sunday School quarter.  Then, she had each of us bring a picture of a car from a newspaper or magazine.  We cut the cars out and glued them onto a piece of cardboard.  There was much conjecture about whose car was fastest as she pinned each one to the starting line.  The prize was a large candy bar and a small amount of cash.  We were off and running.

As the weeks went on, the results were much like any race.  There were leaders, stragglers and middlers.  If you missed a week, you lost a lot of momentum.  Sort of like a botched pit stop.  You could make up the memory verse, but not much else.  As we neared the finish, there were two or three of us vying for the checkered flag.  Blessed with a good memory and a mother who made sure I was in church unless I was close to death, I was a competitive Sunday School racer.  But a strange thing happened on the way to victory circle.  I don’t recall whose car crossed the finish line first and who consequently ended up with the loot.  It might have been me.  But what I do remember was that over the weeks of striving for that prize what became more important to me than winning that contest was being in Sister Smithson’s good graces.  Not that I was afraid of getting into trouble for doing something wrong.  Instead, I learned to value seeing Sister Smithson’s smile when I had done something right.  And that is a prize I carry with me to this day.