In 8th grade PE class, I was relieved to find my teacher was Joe Walker.  Coach Walker knew me because his son Duke was best friends with my brother Randy.  I had hope for leniency and was planning to throw myself on the mercy of the court, so to speak.

Lee Buxton, my 7th grade PE coach, had been unsympathetic. He had forced me to run laps even with a painful degenerative knee disease.  (What is it with coaches?  Do they get kickbacks from Big Aspirin?)  Doctors’ notes held no sway over Coach Buxton.  I’m sure he believed I invented Osgood Schlatterer’s Disease to get out of running.  If I had made it up, I would have picked something simpler and more to the point, such as My Knees Hurt Like Hell Syndrome.  It was years too early for an attack of Tonya Harding Knee.

That first day of class, Coach Walker put his arm around my shoulder.  He guided me into his office and sat me down in front of his desk.  He fished around in a bag he pulled from his hip pocket and inserted a hefty pinch of chewing tobacco inside his cheek.  I waited as he repositioned it carefully with his tongue, concentrating as though pondering subatomic physics or the ineffable nature of gym shorts on teenage girls. 

“Steve,” he finally said, “I have an idea.  Why don’t you lead the class this year?  You just take roll every day and then do whatever exercises you want.”

Images of Rod Serling flashed before my eyes, because this could not be happening to me.  A nerd before it was even remotely cool, I could not climb a rope more than 3 feet without intense vertigo.  What sort of person would trust me to lead a PE class? (“A lazy person” is the answer, by the way.)

I considered the possibilities.  Why, I would practically be a COACH!  Under my benign direction, there would be no sweating, no panting while running laps, no embarrassment because I kicked the basketball when trying to dribble.  I saw no downside to this arrangement, so I accepted.  Coach Walker looked so pleased that he could just spit.  Actually, he did spit.

My first job as an even-handed and totally impartial leader was to divide the class in 2 groups: the kids I knew and liked, and the remaining unlovable dregs.  I then trekked back into the Coaching office to gather equipment. 

I disregarded basketballs and baseballs and other implements of jock world domination.  I was looking for something appropriate.  Something suitable for young men that would rather be enjoying Gilligan’s Island, especially the parts with Mary Ann and Ginger.

Behind stacks of disreputable-looking tables and chairs, I spied a rickety croquet set leaning against a mound of colorful rubber horseshoes.

Croquet and horseshoes!  Why, it was purest genius!  I would never again break a sweat in PE, never shower with kids who had hair in bewildering places!

I designated my own group as the first croqueteers.  The other group got horseshoes, the perfect game for high intoxication levels of coordination.  It would be handy in high school, no doubt.  My elegant plan was that the groups would trade games after returning from Christmas break.

We soon mastered croquet.  To keep things interesting, we began making modifications to the game, which was inevitable for 8th grade boys.  We expanded the shape and dimensions of the field to encompass the entire area at our disposal.  It meant whacking the balls with extra vigor, which was as close to real exercise as we got.

A highlight of play was when an opponent’s ball got knocked off the grassy area and onto the paved driveway.  If you got the angle just right, the ball would roll a hundred feet and wind up in the teacher parking area.  We were so cruel as to insist the player knock the ball over the curb to get it back into play.  No simply picking up the thing for us!  With luck, the poor player would knock the ball too low to clear the curb, causing it to ricochet back towards the teachers’ cars.  This sent us into paroxysms of laughter and jeering, also inevitable with 8th grade boys.

In our minds, an hour a day of croquet for a whole semester brought us up to Olympic competition levels.  I was destined to be the most popular coach at Cloverdale Junior High School, ever.  Well, in my mind.

15 months earlier, in the final days of 6th grade, there had been an assembly to promote band, which was first offered in 7th grade.  I had been impressed by the performance of a flute trio, resplendent in their matching green blazers adorned with flashing medals.  I decided flute was to be my destiny.  I would be a flautist!

When 7th grade started up in September, 1970, I found myself the only boy in the beginning flute section.  I had inadvertently selected a “girl instrument!”  I was mortified! Plus, I could barely even look at girls, much less sit amidst a bevy of them every day!  In another stunning display of stupidity, I dropped band rather than simply change instruments. 

After forsaking band, I took up private guitar lessons.  I practiced about as often as I voluntarily cleaned my room, which is to say never.  I learned no music beyond “Sparkling Stella,” which was just “Twinkle, twinkle little star” renamed to sound posh.  After a year of determined apathy, I acknowledged my failure and gave up guitar forever.  I had less musical aptitude than a tone deaf consumptive dying in the streets of late 19th century Paris, although that might be putting too fine a point on it.

It continued to nag at me that most of my best friends were in band.  Even worse, they seemed to really enjoy it, the wretches!  One day while gleefully launching a croquet ball, I decided it was time to try again.  I signed up for beginner band in the spring, this time learning the manly tenor saxophone.  That meant I had to give up my glorious coach-hood.  I could no longer lead the PE class! As a result, I never got any good at horseshoes, drunk or sober. 

It was worth it.

Most weekends began promptly after school on Friday when Mom, Dad, Randy and I would pile into our enormous-by-modern-standards, tastefully tan Pontiac Catalina.  Dad would point the land yacht northeast and we would leave behind lesser metropolitan Little Rock. 

Along the 90 minute drive, we passed through several towns no larger than a four-way intersection, sometimes with a little church nearby.  Occasionally we would pass a barn with a large ad for Dr. Pepper or fertilizer painted on the roof.  There were few miles without trees and trucks, the truest hallmarks of rural Arkansas.

Dad’s side of the family mostly lived in humble Bradford, on an unpaved, single lane road.  You could pull two wheels into ditches on either side to be passed or for parking.  Because of the tilt, it was considerably harder to open the car door on the non-ditch, uphill side, so Randy, Mom and I usually tumbled out into the ditch.

Not even realizing I was hungry, my mouth would start watering about this time.  You see, first up on our Friday afternoon visit with Grandma was an iron skillet full of fried potatoes, the most comfortable of comfort foods.

Since everyone lived in 4 adjacent homes, it was easy to catch up with my aunts, uncles, cousins, and, of course, many dogs.  Everyone was easy-going, with lots of humor all around, and the sense of family was strong and reassuring.

With the promise of returning Sunday afternoon for a longer stay, we would drive on up to see Mam-maw, Mom’s mother.

A couple of years after Pap-paw died, Mam-maw moved off the farm and into an apartment in Newport, a town on the White River.  She lived a few blocks from the river, the train station, and the main streets of town. 

On Saturday afternoons, we would stop in at Grimes’ Drug Store, where racks of comic books on either side of the front door offered a variety of four color delights.  Following careful selection of the most promising issues, we indulged in hand-squeezed limeade at the soda fountain.  The merest whiff of lime takes me back there in a heartbeat.

We would then hurry down Front Street to the Five and Dime, a store with an impressive array of cheap crap.   There, Randy and I compared toys for sale with those across the street at the Ben Franklin Store, dragging Mom back and forth between them.  A few years earlier, Sam Walton had been owner and manager at the Ben Franklin before he decided to open his own store in Bentonville.  You may have heard of it.

Around supper time Saturday evening, Uncle Aut (pronounced like “Otto” without the last “O” and short for Arthur) and Aunt Oma would stop by. 

Aut and Oma owned a little store up the highway in Tuckerman.  They always brought a bag of candy with an astronomical caloric payload: Pixie Stix, wax lips, candy bars, and chocolate wrapped like coins and baseballs and footballs.  There were also little wax bottles each containing 3 drops of syrup.  Since we never figured out what they were supposed to taste like, we distinguished them by their colors, as in “red flavor” or “green flavor.” 

Mam-maw’s living room housed a big console TV, a gas stove to keep the apartment warm (the TV helped, too), a dining set, a couch, a comfy chair and a coffee table.  A newspaper turned to the crossword puzzle rested on the coffee table, along with Mam-maw’s Pall Mall cigarettes (called “Pell Mells”), a cigarette lighter the size and heft of a hand grenade, two ash trays (one for each end), and a set of Rook cards.

While Randy and I rode the sugar express to nirvana, the adults would break out the folding card table.  They would grab up the Rook cards, divide into teams of two players each, with one adult sitting out until the next game, fire up a round of cigarettes, and start dealing.

Randy and I would usually pull up a couple of dining chairs and watch.  It was always entertaining to see what shenanigans Uncle Aut would pull.  He was a wild and enthusiastic player, and maintained a running commentary of what he was up to.  “Oh, my,” he would say, “this is the worst hand I ever saw.  I’ll bid 90.”  90 was an aggressive bid that rational players only attempted with really good cards or as a sort of Hail Mary play.  As a result of winning the bid, Aut would get a few extra cards to incorporate into his hand.  Flamboyantly dropping his cards on the table for all to see, he would exclaim “Now, HOW am I supposed to make 90 with THIS hand?”

Sometimes when a game ended, I would ask to play.  I might as well have requested a cigarette and a whisky sour.  The answer was always “Not yet.  You are too young.  Someday.”

One Saturday, after a couple of games, I inquired again.  Uncle Aut, always the daredevil, gave Mam-maw a conspiratorial wink and said, “I think it is time.  Let’s let the boy give it a try.”

Uncle Aut surrendered his seat to me, and I sat down proudly among the adults.  Everything seemed immensely better than it had been just moments before.   I felt electricity in my fingertips as a stack of Rook cards was dealt to me.  Conscious that this was an important moment, I picked up my first hand and contemplated my opening bid.

I don’t recall any other details about the game that day, but I was the winner in every way that counts.

During sophomore year of high school, when first period band ended each day, I scurried as fast as I could to Mr. Jeff Weatherly’s geometry class.  I always finished my previous night’s homework at the beginning of class.  

I started it there, too, so there really was no time to waste.

A few extra minutes were granted to me because second period began with school announcements.  Filled with trite homilies and reminders to be attentive, students unironically ignored them all.

Working feverishly, I always paused when Mr. Weatherly read out the cafeteria offerings for the day.  I was intrigued and delighted by his curious pronunciation of the inevitable green selection du jour, “ssshef sssolid.”

Mr. Weatherly was, as Shakespeare might have put it, “a man of finite jest”.  I don’t recall that he ever smiled or joked in class, not once.  I’m sure that, unlike us, he found no amusement in the name “Pythagoras,” nor in any theorem involving the “length of the hypotenuse,” which we regarded as a sly and naughty euphemism.

As in many classes, students were seated in alphabetical order.  Holly Anderson was in the first row, first seat.  I was to her right, in the second row, first seat.  To my right, the third row, first seat was inexplicably empty. That fact is germane to this tale.

Behind Holly sat Steve Anderson, a student with whom I had never spoken nor had another class.  Steve’s usually inattentive manner told me that he did not care if we were studying algebra or vertebra.  I was quiet and serious; my laces were far too straight for his consideration, and he was too much a consummate goof-off for mine. 

Mr. Weatherly had a curious habit of standing just to my right, between my seat and the empty seat on the third row.  He would rest his left calf flat on the desktop, his shoe sole facing me at a distance of perhaps 20 inches, as he pontificated on the doctrine of original sine.

One day, as Mr. Weatherly was standing with his leg on the desk, I experienced an intense odor of putrefaction.  Had some varmint expired in my proximity?  A brief investigation led to an undeniable conclusion; noxious fumes were wafting my way from Weatherly’s nearby Oxford.  I turned my head aside, tucking my face away from the stench, and covered my nose as best I could without being too obvious.

I observed Steve sitting with fingers wrapped tightly around his desktop, hunched over as if struggling to resist gale force winds.  Conspiratorially, he whispered, “Stinks, don’t it?”

Oh, that such an innocuous phrase was my undoing!  I had to laugh, but it seemed injudicious with Mr. Weatherly standing RIGHT THERE.  Trying to hold back giggles, I started to squeak a little, producing sounds like air escaping from the stretched neck of a balloon.  Steve was making noises as though he might hack up a hairball any second.

Mr. Weatherly had returned to the blackboard with his back to us when our repressed cackles grew too loud to ignore.  He turned, sincerely unentertained, and asked, “Mr. Hendricks, WHAT is ssso funny?  Would you care to share it with the clossss?” 

His precise and extra sibilant enunciation, equally funny and horrifying because it was directed at me, had a detrimental effect on my self-restraint, now only a single control rod away from total meltdown.

What could I say in this situation? 

“Can you honesty not smell that?” 

“Do you have a sick dog at home?”

“Sir, have you considered that you may have stepped in something unfortunate?” 

I tried to devise a response that would not guarantee a disciplinary excursion to the office. Desperate, I glanced over my shoulder at Steve.  No aid or succor was to be found there.  His eyes were shut and his face was screwed tight.  He looked as if struck with dysentery in the vicinity of precisely zero toilets. 

“Ummm, well, ah…” I offered with sublime oratorical brilliance, playing for time. 

As my wife Angelina lovingly and frequently attests, I am a fantastically bad liar.   At that moment, balanced on the knife-edge of hysteria, my beleaguered mind could only supply inappropriate verses about a fellow from Nantucket.

Attempting to throw the teacher off the scent, so to speak, I stammered out a minimal “no, sir.” By answering the second question, I had artfully avoided the more perilous first.  Alas, it did not quell the oncoming tsunami within me.

Soon, Steve and I were laughing like crazed hyenas. You know, if hyenas studied geometry.  The whole class stared at us like we had gone mad, perhaps watching our mouths for telltale foam and froth.  I suspect Mr. Weatherly was contemplating a barrelful of the Ole Yeller treatment for each of us.

At one point, reduced to flaccid husks with tears running down our cheeks, we were too spent to laugh.  Like pugilists hanging on the ropes, we uttered only the occasional helpless whimper until the class bell spared us.

Having escaped the consequences of our reactions, Steve and I gathered our books and filed out of the room. We nodded to each other almost imperceptibly, acknowledging an unexpected and newfound brotherhood, and continued on to third period.

     After 14 years of chastity, I was soon to have my first date.  I had confessed to my good friend Susan that I was in love with her good friend, Lynnette.  Susan confessed that she loved my good friend Terry.  By an odd coincidence, Susan and Terry and Lynnette and I went on a double date that Friday night.

     We decided to see Encounter With the Unknown, which sounded scary enough to prompt the girls to run to the boys for protection.  I hoped so.

     An uneventful week passed prior to the movie.  My civics teacher told me that she disliked me, and Terry caught a cold.

     By Friday, I had amassed five dollars and found a matching pair of socks.

     Friday passed slowly.  The pep assembly lasted for decades.  As I played my sax, I envisioned my neckstrap as Lynnette’s soft arms around my neck, pulling me closer.

     After school, I hurried home to perform the rituals to the goddess of Love.  The first unnecessary thing I did was shave.  At that time, hair had never been seen between my neck and nose.  Next, I showered lightly in my father’s cologne.  Dressing quickly, I walked confidently out the door.

     “Be careful!” my mother shouted after me.

     “I won’t,” I thought, grinning like I knew something.

     At the movie, I proudly purchased two tickets, two popcorns, and two huge drinks.

     We sat in the back row.  When the lights went out, it did something I wasn’t prepared for.  It got dark.  I was afraid of darkness with a passionate woman beside me.  Before I had time to defend myself, the movie illuminated the room, and I saw that Lynnette was talking to Susan.

     The movie droned on as I sat, cross-armed, staring at the chair in front of me.  I knew that I wanted to hold Lynnette’s hand.  I also knew that I would in just a minute.

     After an hour of worrying, I reached over to hold her hand.  On the screen, an ambulance careened madly down a street, lights flashing wildly.  As I touched her hand, she gave my arm an upward push.  Magically, my arm went around her neck.

     I sat in the semi-darkness, my right arm around a girl’s neck, staring at the wall to my left.  Her head was on my shoulder.  I could feel it.

     Something was missing.  I knew it was.  So I slowly turned my head to see if Lynnette thought so, too.  She slowly turned her eyes up toward mine.  I couldn’t look away.  I was caught, whirling madly down blind alleys like the ambulance.

     I realized what I had to do.  It was no longer of my free will.  It was a command, an order, an inevitability that I kiss Lynnette.  But what if I missed?  I didn’t want to kiss her nose or chin.

     Then she kissed me.  Then I kissed her.  It was a set pattern after that.

     Later, after I had kicked over both cokes and vainly tried to get comfortable with a chair arm in my side, I noticed Terry.  Terry was noticing us.  A momentary feeling of pity touched me as I remembered Terry’s cold.  But it didn’t slow me.

     When we felt the movie ending, Lynnette and I disengaged and watched it.  When it was over, we watched the people file past.  In the empty theater, we stood up and laughed.  We laughed about the coke, about the movie, and about our fears.  We walked home.

     Before I entered my house, I loosened my tie and unbuttoned my collar.  I then firmly opened the door, strolled through the living room and my family, and walked to my room.  I jumped on the bed, lacing my fingers behind my neck.  I lay there a long time, staring contentedly at the ceiling above me.

     Hell, lipstick on my collar or not, I knew that I was a man.

On December 7, 1975, the McClellan High band marched in the Little Rock Christmas parade. Our band director, Mr. Washburn, had informed us that the parade would be televised. He insisted we look smart, watch our lines, and not break rank if confronted with horse manure in our paths.

Our misgivings about this decree were put to the test soon after the parade started. My friend John, marching in front of me, stepped square in a large, steaming pile. He slipped around like a vaudevillian on a banana peel, first sliding one way, then another. His baritone flashed in the sun as John gyrated about, but he miraculously stayed vertical and escaped a tumble in the muck.

My row of saxophonists, witnesses to this impromptu bit of slapstick, started laughing. In the way that you cannot stop snickering the more important it is that you do, we could not help ourselves. Sousa became squawks as we struggled to produce a few notes while cackling through our horns. To avoid increasingly copious dung from the well-fed horses, we began weaving about like inebriated sailors on a seven day pass.

On the bus ride home, we resolved that henceforth, band members must march before the horses or, at the very least, not wear white shoes.

Angelina, my dear wife, adores a parade and misses no opportunity to watch. I have mixed feelings about parades. They tend to transport me back to that day when the shit hit the band.

     I had spent second and third grade living in a neighborhood with no kids to play with, and no parks to play in.  As a result, I grew heavily dependent on comic books and television to entertain me.  I also “grew heavily” in the most literal way.  I metamorphosed from an active, skinny kid to what children’s clothing tastefully labeled as “hefty,” which sounds so much better than “plump,” “portly,” or “walrus-esque.”

     My unique baseball glove had required no ultimate bovine sacrifice in its construction.  It was fashioned of seductive black plastic with red piping.  It reminded me of the Batmobile, rivaled in coolness only by Star Trek’s Enterprise, and was therefore excellent and worthy in my mind.  In actuality, it was cheap even by dollar store standards, only marginally better for catching a ball than wrapping your hand in duct tape. 

     This bit of style over substance (and the fact that my brother and all my cousins were naturally talented athletes) convinced me that I was ready to play some serious ball.  I asked Dad to help me prepare for summer baseball tryouts.  We shared an intense and productive 15 minutes of throwing and catching the ball, followed by a week of avoiding all sports related activity other than Dad having a few Old Milwaukee beers while watching a game.

     At the tryouts, Dad stood on the far side of a chain link fence with other parents as we kids displayed our talents at throwing, batting and running.  When finished, I ended up sobbing at the fence.  A serious case of nerves had struck me while I demonstrated that, as a baseball player, I was unrivaled at sitting home reading Spider-man comics.

     The coaches then made the kind of career-ending call that is ill-advised, clearly wrong-headed, and detrimental to the very name of baseball; they allowed me to join the league. 

     At practice, I was a fast runner and a strong batter.  I imagined that I could lead the team to a national championship, thereby inspiring other kids who enjoyed fried chicken a little too much for their own finger-lickin’ good. 

     With minimal effort, I could foresee my heroic face plastered across cereal boxes!   My baseball card likeness would flap against bicycle tires all across the USA!

     Soon, everyone would throw out their dull brown leather gloves and demand black plastic ones with red piping! 

     Hollywood might even immortalize my ascent to baseball greatness.  Frank Capra could come out of retirement to direct, or David Lean could give me the “Lawrence of Arabia” treatment.  I eagerly awaited the Technicolor, CinemaScope glory of “Steven of Arkansas.”

     When it came time for the actual games, it was a different story altogether.  More like something starring the Three Stooges, although fortunately with less eye poking.

     Every game day, parents arrayed themselves uncomfortably on the bleachers behind home plate.  There they tried to get comfortable while the unyielding concrete wreaked havoc on their tender welcome-to-the-baby-boom-2.5-kids-and-a-mortgage hemorrhoids.

     These disgruntled parents began shouting nasty taunts as soon as I stepped to the plate, leering like ravenous predators sensing the weakest (yet obviously well marbled) member of the herd.

     Nothing was off limits.  My height, weight, glasses, attractiveness, intelligence and penis size were all judged and found lacking.  Okay, that last one may have been my ex-wife years later, but it was painful nonetheless.

     Don’t think that the mothers were less brutal than the fathers, because they were far worse.  These women, no doubt kind and nurturing at home, became mercilessly cruel and derisive harpies hell-bent on verbally eviscerating kids from opposing teams.  Compared to spending time with them, the Viet Nam war seemed as inviting as the young lady covered in whipped cream on Herb Alpert’s album cover, which was very inviting, indeed.

     Under the coldly confident stare of the pitcher, I grew panicky and my guts turned to water.  My knees shook like a lime green Jello mold, complete with pineapple chunks and pecans, carelessly left atop an unbalanced washing machine.  Set to heavy spin cycle.  On the San Andreas fault.

     With my wits scrambled and my self-confidence shredded, I would swing desperately at anything thrown at me.  My style would be best described as a cross between Mom trying to kill a gnat with a soup ladle and a Samurai wannabe on the world’s worst acid trip.

     On those rare occasions when I did hit the ball, I would stand in disbelief, mouth agape, until everyone screamed at me to run.  I always forgot to drop the bat, carrying it to first base with me.  There Coach would take the bat from me, and in his eyes I could see the temptation to wield it and put me out of his misery.

     I logged a lot of hours in the dugout sucking on salt tablets and drinking cherry cokes, the glorious sugar filled highlight of the summer.  By the end of the season, there were permanent indentations on the bench the shape of my butt alongside a 12 ounce plastic cup.

     When the coach reluctantly put me in, I played left field.  Left field is the place you play your least talented players.  The ones you wish had gone out for golf rather than appear (complete with cheap glove) as if from a nightmare after too much Spicy Thai Crab Rangoon.

     Among my long list of shortcomings, I could throw a ball with neither accuracy nor distance.  Whenever I got the ball in play, I would rush to send it in the general direction of the infield.  I threw with the uncalculated accuracy of a brain-damaged monkey flinging feces in a hurricane.

     It was years before I realized I was terrible in part because I simply did not know the rules for baseball.  Nobody had ever bothered to enlighten me, the assumption being that every red-blooded American boy knew the rules by the time the umbilical cord was cut.  With regards to baseball, I was a test tube baby.

     The team ended the season in second place, so we all received trophies.  This was back in the day when only the players of the top 3 teams were awarded trophies; there were no participation awards.  The design was of a boy at home plate holding a bat over his shoulder in anticipation of the pitch.  The bat in my trophy was loose and would fall out no matter how many times I glued it back in.  At some point it got lost, so my trophy depicted an idiot attempting to play ball without the necessary tool for the game.  It was a totally appropriate award for me.

     During the season, I had missed a significant number of games for vacation and other family obligations.  At the presentation of the trophies, one of my teammates made a cutting remark to the effect that I did not really deserve mine because I missed half the games.  I thought he was a bit of an ungrateful wretch, since the team did so well precisely because I had missed half the games.

     Looking back on my singularly unrewarding baseball experience, I like to think that I rightfully earned the world’s first-and-perhaps-only Nonparticipation Award.