The holidays came too early this year. I'm not ready for there to be holiday music on the radio and in TV commercials BEFORE Halloween. However, inspired by the sight of an overnight dusting of snow on our back yard lawn, the "spirit" hit me this morning in the shower when I heard the words of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" issuing from my own pipes.
I'm not a religious or spiritual person. Okay, I'll say it at risk of losing my new blogger friends: I am atheist. I'm not militant about it. Christians, Jews, Muslims... you can all worship freely around me. It's just not my bag. Part of me thinks I should write it "X-mas," but the holiday was not named for a fictional/real person named "X." But that's not what this post is about.
I'm not religious. The "Christmas Spirit" within me harks back to my childhood when the brainwashing had its hold of me and I believed, and my parents were young and my siblings were all living at home and we'd wake up in our pajamas and sprint to the Christmas tree to see what Santa had left under it, and surely there was a Santa because our parents couldn't afford to buy us so many toys! I still have warm thoughts about that holiday because that's when the family gets together for a huge meal. Everyone's together, laughing, smiling, digesting. That's Christmas for me. Togetherness.
It's interesting that probably the most famous modern song to commemorate the Christian holiday was written by a Jew! He captured the heart of the holiday in his lyrics, the spirit of the holiday without being spiritual. The Santa side of it instead of the Christ side of it. But what this post is about is literally the title of the post. Have you ever heard the sleighbells during a gentle snowfall? I have.
I was in fifth grade. It had to be December, likely less than a week before Christmas. The sixth grade bully, Tim Pfeiffer (pronounced "PY-fer"), had threatened me with a pummeling after school when he and I tangled going after a ball at recess. I had made every effort to get out the doors as quickly as possible to be out of sight by the time Tim remembered he was scheduled to flatten me. He had quite a busy fight schedule, did Tim. But something happened to delay me, and I was trembling from the fear of facing him. I had a friend with me who was there for moral support more than anything. Someone to wipe up the blood and call an ambulance when the fists stopped flying. I can't remember today who that friend was. It must not have been my best friend because at the time he was fearless. He would have taken on a moving car if he thought he had heard it threaten him or one of his friends. No, this friend was there to watch, take notes for the school newspaper, and make splints.
The only non-violent, defensive move I could think of at the moment was to leave through a different door than I usually did, this one being the school's main entrance. It had started snowing earlier in the day, and by the time school let out, there was about an inch or two of accumulation, on the sidewalks as well as on the grass, so this was a real snowfall. My friend and I walked outside and there was no Tim Pfeiffer. Instead, out there was a calm I had seldom experienced in that small suburb of Chicago. The snowflakes drifted silently to the others that had preceded them to create the white blanket beneath our feet. And either traffic and wind had ceased moving everywhere within a half-mile radius of the school, or the snowfall was so quieting that I could hear myself breathing a sigh of relief that I wasn't being battered by a pair of sixth-grader fists.
And then I heard them. Call it the magic a 10-year-old feels in a white landscape as the white still falls around him, but I heard them. I stopped breathing in order to make sure I heard them. Sleigh bells. Somewhere off in the distance, in no particular direction, a jing-jing-jingling that almost wasn't there, somewhere. Convinced I was hearing things, I stepped forward to go home, my feet crunching on the fresh snow, when my friend said, "Stop! SHH!" I froze. He stood with his arms out at 45-degree angles, appearing to try to still the air with his hands as he listened. "Do you hear that?"
"The bells?" I said.
"Yeah!"
It was ghostly. They faded away, and then back in again, just to the outer edges of our hearing, and finally they were gone. The streets had been plowed, nobody in the area that I was aware of owned horses, let alone a sleigh. And who would ring sleighbells from their front yard while the snow fell?
I don't know if Mr. Berlin meant the same thing when he wrote that line in that perhaps most famous of his songs, or if he simply meant that there really were sleighbells ringing for the children to hear. But when that moment from my childhood came back to me this morning in the shower as my lips formed the words, when I realized that once, just once, I was one of those children who listened to hear sleighbells in the snow, and I heard them, the Christmas Spirit and all of its childhood magic was upon me.
Happy holidays to you, whichever of them you choose to celebrate, however you choose to celebrate them.
dassall
(...and I never got that beating. Tim Pfeiffer had forgotten about me. He must have had more important kids to thrash in his busy beating schedule.)
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Monday, November 21, 2005
The Best Corned Beef Hash and Eggs Breakfast In America Project
In one of his more recent posts, The Sort of Stuff You Think About, Mr. Schprock made reference to one of his earlier posts, to which he provided a link, about his Saturday morning breakfast spot, thus making me read TWO of his posts for a full understanding.
But, at risk of appearing as though I can’t formulate an original thought, his earlier post about his favorite breakfast spot got me to thinking about my favorite breakfast spot.
During my brief tenure at a previous job, coworkers of mine acquainted me with a small diner about a half-block from our office building. Mac’s restaurant is a narrow, rectangular space in a small, one-story, commercial tenant building of narrow, rectangular spaces. My colleagues of the time had brought me there for lunch that one day, but they normally chose local fast-food restaurants for lunch-time jaunts, so we went to Mac’s together only once. As a mass-transit commuter, I sometimes had the good fortune to catch a bus within seconds of arriving at the stop, and then arriving at the train platform as a train pulled into the stop, which allowed me as much as 20 minutes of extra time when I got off the train at my destination. Being a big breakfast fan (and I mean “big breakfast fan” in all three possible meanings), and relegated to foot travel, I decided to drop in on the people at Mac’s to see what kind of breakfast they could do me.
Mac’s is your typical “greasy spoon” type of diner. You enter the building on the southwest corner and find yourself facing the south end – “the smoking section” – of the straight counter, and between the long row and the short row of booths juxtaposed at a right angle to each other, with a break at the corner entrance. The counter seats twelve patrons, six at each half of the counter on either side of a break in the middle to accommodate the waitresses as they work. That first morning at Mac’s was a cold, Chicago winter day, and as I entered I saw a sign that read something to the effect of, “As a courtesy to all of our customers, lone patrons please sit at the counter during peak business hours.” There were several booths open. “The smoking section” was full, which suited me just fine. There was an available stool at the north end of the north counter, way at the back of the dining room, with the adjacent stool also empty, so I wouldn’t have to sit immediately next to another patron. As I sat I was warmed by the heat collecting over and around the large griddle directly in front of me across the counter and against the east wall, where the lead cook, a stocky, 30s-ish Mexican man worked at a feverish pace. The waitress for my section approached from the business side of the counter brandishing a full, glass Bunn coffee pot and said, “Morning. Coffee?”
“Certainly,” I said as I turned my coffee cup upright in its saucer. The waitress handed me the menu and my eyes stopped on “Corned Beef Hash and Eggs.” I don’t know when I started liking corned beef hash, but I do. I seem to recall that the first time I ever ordered it was because it sounded good. And it was. So I decided to try Mac’s version of corned beef hash and eggs.
And so it went for the next year or so, stopping in once every week or two and, having approved heartily of Mac’s rendition on that first cold morning, breaking fast on corned beef hash and eggs, over medium, with a side of home-fried potatoes, and toast.
As time went on I learned that the owner of the place is not named Mac, nor does anyone named Mac even work there. It seems that Mac sold his old diner to Perry, a young son of a Greek immigrant. I’m sure it’s Perinakos or some really thick-sounding Greek name, but he introduced himself as Perry. I learned that Perry employs his father, whom I know by no name other than “Pop,” in the kitchen. I learned that the highly-efficient lead cook is named Joe. He speaks with a fairly strong Spanish accent, but instead of José, he introduces himself as Joe. He emigrated here from the Michoacan region of Mexico. He learned my name within a few visits, and within a few visits more he understood that, with only rare variation, my breakfast is corned beef hash and eggs, over medium, a side of potatoes, and toast. I learned that Joe has Mondays off, and on Mondays Perry cooks. I learned that breakfast is always, always, ALWAYS served to you within two minutes of ordering, but it goes all the way up to three minutes when they’re really busy. I learned that the best place to sit at Mac’s Diner is at the far north end of the counter, at the back of the dining room, because Joe knows me and my “usual,” starts cooking my breakfast before the waitress takes my order, and serves it directly to me when it’s ready. On top of that, it’s nice and toasty warm back there, away from the entrance, on a cold and windy winter morning. And I learned that “the smoking section” is a figurative term because the place is so small that, if “the smoking section” is full, and everyone in it is smoking, no matter where I sit at Mac's, I might as well be sitting in “the smoking section.”
Not much later I quit my job at the place half a block from Mac’s Diner, but, to my good fortune, my current place of employment has me driving right past my old place of employment and, subsequently, Mac’s Diner, so, though not as frequently as when it was a three-minute walk away, I still stop in occasionally for a morning bite.
With the new job came a lot of travel, a lot of stays in hotels in a wide assortment of cities. In many of these places I tried the locals' corned beef hash and eggs, only to be disappointed. I also made my first attempt at losing the extra weight I had put on from all that traveling and eating restaurant food. So my corned beef hash and eggs order at Mac’s changed slightly to include only a half order of potatoes (and it’s still a lot of potatoes!), and rye toast, which, I discovered the first time I ordered it, I like better than wheat or white.
My epicurean exploits across the country have inspired me to initiate an experiment, which I call The Best Corned Beef Hash and Eggs Breakfast In America Project. See, it’s not just about the best corned beef hash. It’s about the whole plate. I hate when a restaurant serves the eggs on top of the corned beef hash. Yes, I know that there are little chunks of potato in the corned beef hash, but there has to be a pile of home fries or hash browns with it, whether as part of the dish or ordered on the side. And it’s nothing without toast. I like my eggs “dunky.” Call it the last hold-out of my childhood habits, but I have to be able to “dunk” the toast in the semi-cooked egg yolk or I might as well just have a bowl of Cheerios. Once the yolks have been “dunked” out, I then use the fork, tines flat against the plate, to finely chop the egg white, just like my mother used to do. Yeah. That’s it. It’s a paean to my dear departed mother, so don’t make any smart-ass comments about my dunky-choppy eggs! And then I mix the chopped eggs, potatoes and corned beef hash all into one big pile of hash to scoop up by the forkful and eat with a bite of toast. YUM!
Some places have served me homemade corned beef hash, with succulent chunks of meat cut from a side of corned beef and mixed with potatoes and some kind of spices. It was quite impressive and really quite flavorful. But the strong flavor of the corned beef has to be tempered by the other ingredients in the hash. They didn’t do that. And they screwed up by having some new-age presentation of the eggs, poor preparation of the potatoes, and the corned beef got stuck in my teeth. ‘A’ for effort, ‘D’ for execution. Other places seem to think that any old corned beef hash from a can will suffice. It doesn’t. Grade = ‘F’.
The Best Corned Beef Hash and Eggs Breakfast In America Project is far from scientific. Sometimes on the road my interest in just having a decent breakfast steers me away from the chance that the corned beef hash will suck, thus disappointing me and making me wish I had ordered the country fried steak and eggs. So sometimes I opt for that. Or the stack o’ pancakes. Or the Cheerios. Thus far in my experience, there is yet to be found in the USA a corned beef hash and eggs breakfast to rival that at Mac’s Diner.
So, my dear readers …all three of you… if you’re ever traveling on I-90 to or through the near northwest suburbs of Chicago, near O’Hare airport, and you happen to find yourself at the corner of Cumberland Avenue and Higgins Road, look to the northeast corner of the intersection, at the first building on Higgins, just east of the gas station. It won’t take you long to find the current home of The Best Corned Beef Hash and Eggs Breakfast In America, Mac’s Diner. And if you decide to stop in, look over to the customer seated in the last counter stool at the back of the dining room. If it’s the right time of day and he’s 40ish, balding and, fatting(?), and he’s polishing off a corned beef hash and eggs breakfast, he just might be me!
Note: A law passed recently in Illinois now bans smoking in public establishments, so there is no longer a smoking section in Mac's. Or anywhere, for that matter!
-2 January 2011
dassall
But, at risk of appearing as though I can’t formulate an original thought, his earlier post about his favorite breakfast spot got me to thinking about my favorite breakfast spot.
During my brief tenure at a previous job, coworkers of mine acquainted me with a small diner about a half-block from our office building. Mac’s restaurant is a narrow, rectangular space in a small, one-story, commercial tenant building of narrow, rectangular spaces. My colleagues of the time had brought me there for lunch that one day, but they normally chose local fast-food restaurants for lunch-time jaunts, so we went to Mac’s together only once. As a mass-transit commuter, I sometimes had the good fortune to catch a bus within seconds of arriving at the stop, and then arriving at the train platform as a train pulled into the stop, which allowed me as much as 20 minutes of extra time when I got off the train at my destination. Being a big breakfast fan (and I mean “big breakfast fan” in all three possible meanings), and relegated to foot travel, I decided to drop in on the people at Mac’s to see what kind of breakfast they could do me.
Mac’s is your typical “greasy spoon” type of diner. You enter the building on the southwest corner and find yourself facing the south end – “the smoking section” – of the straight counter, and between the long row and the short row of booths juxtaposed at a right angle to each other, with a break at the corner entrance. The counter seats twelve patrons, six at each half of the counter on either side of a break in the middle to accommodate the waitresses as they work. That first morning at Mac’s was a cold, Chicago winter day, and as I entered I saw a sign that read something to the effect of, “As a courtesy to all of our customers, lone patrons please sit at the counter during peak business hours.” There were several booths open. “The smoking section” was full, which suited me just fine. There was an available stool at the north end of the north counter, way at the back of the dining room, with the adjacent stool also empty, so I wouldn’t have to sit immediately next to another patron. As I sat I was warmed by the heat collecting over and around the large griddle directly in front of me across the counter and against the east wall, where the lead cook, a stocky, 30s-ish Mexican man worked at a feverish pace. The waitress for my section approached from the business side of the counter brandishing a full, glass Bunn coffee pot and said, “Morning. Coffee?”
“Certainly,” I said as I turned my coffee cup upright in its saucer. The waitress handed me the menu and my eyes stopped on “Corned Beef Hash and Eggs.” I don’t know when I started liking corned beef hash, but I do. I seem to recall that the first time I ever ordered it was because it sounded good. And it was. So I decided to try Mac’s version of corned beef hash and eggs.
And so it went for the next year or so, stopping in once every week or two and, having approved heartily of Mac’s rendition on that first cold morning, breaking fast on corned beef hash and eggs, over medium, with a side of home-fried potatoes, and toast.
As time went on I learned that the owner of the place is not named Mac, nor does anyone named Mac even work there. It seems that Mac sold his old diner to Perry, a young son of a Greek immigrant. I’m sure it’s Perinakos or some really thick-sounding Greek name, but he introduced himself as Perry. I learned that Perry employs his father, whom I know by no name other than “Pop,” in the kitchen. I learned that the highly-efficient lead cook is named Joe. He speaks with a fairly strong Spanish accent, but instead of José, he introduces himself as Joe. He emigrated here from the Michoacan region of Mexico. He learned my name within a few visits, and within a few visits more he understood that, with only rare variation, my breakfast is corned beef hash and eggs, over medium, a side of potatoes, and toast. I learned that Joe has Mondays off, and on Mondays Perry cooks. I learned that breakfast is always, always, ALWAYS served to you within two minutes of ordering, but it goes all the way up to three minutes when they’re really busy. I learned that the best place to sit at Mac’s Diner is at the far north end of the counter, at the back of the dining room, because Joe knows me and my “usual,” starts cooking my breakfast before the waitress takes my order, and serves it directly to me when it’s ready. On top of that, it’s nice and toasty warm back there, away from the entrance, on a cold and windy winter morning. And I learned that “the smoking section” is a figurative term because the place is so small that, if “the smoking section” is full, and everyone in it is smoking, no matter where I sit at Mac's, I might as well be sitting in “the smoking section.”
Not much later I quit my job at the place half a block from Mac’s Diner, but, to my good fortune, my current place of employment has me driving right past my old place of employment and, subsequently, Mac’s Diner, so, though not as frequently as when it was a three-minute walk away, I still stop in occasionally for a morning bite.
With the new job came a lot of travel, a lot of stays in hotels in a wide assortment of cities. In many of these places I tried the locals' corned beef hash and eggs, only to be disappointed. I also made my first attempt at losing the extra weight I had put on from all that traveling and eating restaurant food. So my corned beef hash and eggs order at Mac’s changed slightly to include only a half order of potatoes (and it’s still a lot of potatoes!), and rye toast, which, I discovered the first time I ordered it, I like better than wheat or white.
My epicurean exploits across the country have inspired me to initiate an experiment, which I call The Best Corned Beef Hash and Eggs Breakfast In America Project. See, it’s not just about the best corned beef hash. It’s about the whole plate. I hate when a restaurant serves the eggs on top of the corned beef hash. Yes, I know that there are little chunks of potato in the corned beef hash, but there has to be a pile of home fries or hash browns with it, whether as part of the dish or ordered on the side. And it’s nothing without toast. I like my eggs “dunky.” Call it the last hold-out of my childhood habits, but I have to be able to “dunk” the toast in the semi-cooked egg yolk or I might as well just have a bowl of Cheerios. Once the yolks have been “dunked” out, I then use the fork, tines flat against the plate, to finely chop the egg white, just like my mother used to do. Yeah. That’s it. It’s a paean to my dear departed mother, so don’t make any smart-ass comments about my dunky-choppy eggs! And then I mix the chopped eggs, potatoes and corned beef hash all into one big pile of hash to scoop up by the forkful and eat with a bite of toast. YUM!
Some places have served me homemade corned beef hash, with succulent chunks of meat cut from a side of corned beef and mixed with potatoes and some kind of spices. It was quite impressive and really quite flavorful. But the strong flavor of the corned beef has to be tempered by the other ingredients in the hash. They didn’t do that. And they screwed up by having some new-age presentation of the eggs, poor preparation of the potatoes, and the corned beef got stuck in my teeth. ‘A’ for effort, ‘D’ for execution. Other places seem to think that any old corned beef hash from a can will suffice. It doesn’t. Grade = ‘F’.
The Best Corned Beef Hash and Eggs Breakfast In America Project is far from scientific. Sometimes on the road my interest in just having a decent breakfast steers me away from the chance that the corned beef hash will suck, thus disappointing me and making me wish I had ordered the country fried steak and eggs. So sometimes I opt for that. Or the stack o’ pancakes. Or the Cheerios. Thus far in my experience, there is yet to be found in the USA a corned beef hash and eggs breakfast to rival that at Mac’s Diner.
So, my dear readers …all three of you… if you’re ever traveling on I-90 to or through the near northwest suburbs of Chicago, near O’Hare airport, and you happen to find yourself at the corner of Cumberland Avenue and Higgins Road, look to the northeast corner of the intersection, at the first building on Higgins, just east of the gas station. It won’t take you long to find the current home of The Best Corned Beef Hash and Eggs Breakfast In America, Mac’s Diner. And if you decide to stop in, look over to the customer seated in the last counter stool at the back of the dining room. If it’s the right time of day and he’s 40ish, balding and, fatting(?), and he’s polishing off a corned beef hash and eggs breakfast, he just might be me!
Note: A law passed recently in Illinois now bans smoking in public establishments, so there is no longer a smoking section in Mac's. Or anywhere, for that matter!
-2 January 2011
dassall
Saturday, November 12, 2005
Secrets
About 15 years ago my wife bought our house, which was built around 1900. About two weeks ago work was started on the installation of central air conditioning. The first step was done by a lone man, Greg. In the basement, while cutting holes for what were to be the first floor registers, Greg had to contend with sections of wallboard that a previous owner of our home had nailed to the floor joists in order to make a civilized ceiling for the basement. As he pulled down one of these sections of wallboard, 
he discovered this old toy tractor, covered in who knows how many years of dust and dirt, squirreled away there. We went online and referenced the only available evidence the toy provided for us, "Arcade Toys" and "McCormick Deering," and the best we could determine is that the tractor is missing a nickel plated farmer holding a steering wheel that fits onto the long shaft protruding up at an angle from the tractor, and that the cast iron toy was manufactured and sold between the 1920s and the 1940s.
But I couldn't help but wonder who hid it up there and why. Was it a father punishing a misbehaving child, convincing him with a bluff that toys not put away are thrown away; was it a mean child hiding the toy from a sibling; was it perhaps a selfish child beset by the turmoil of relatives moving into the house protecting his assets from curious cousins' hands; in any case, forgotten for eternity? Or, just maybe, was it a previous owner who had spent the best years of his life in this house, perhaps coming of age here, who, upon setting out into the world on his own, couldn't bear to separate the two old friends and hid the toy in his old home's guts in hopes that they'd never be separated?
Did whoever put it where it was found ever as an adult think back to this toy and wonder whatever happened to it? Or worse, did that person ever think back to it and realize that, when the family moved, he forgot it up in the floor joists above the basement where he hid it?
Is this person even alive today?
Whoever you are, we found your toy, and we think it's just the neatest thing. If you show up on our doorstep and ask for it back, we would gladly give it to you.
dassall
he discovered this old toy tractor, covered in who knows how many years of dust and dirt, squirreled away there. We went online and referenced the only available evidence the toy provided for us, "Arcade Toys" and "McCormick Deering," and the best we could determine is that the tractor is missing a nickel plated farmer holding a steering wheel that fits onto the long shaft protruding up at an angle from the tractor, and that the cast iron toy was manufactured and sold between the 1920s and the 1940s.But I couldn't help but wonder who hid it up there and why. Was it a father punishing a misbehaving child, convincing him with a bluff that toys not put away are thrown away; was it a mean child hiding the toy from a sibling; was it perhaps a selfish child beset by the turmoil of relatives moving into the house protecting his assets from curious cousins' hands; in any case, forgotten for eternity? Or, just maybe, was it a previous owner who had spent the best years of his life in this house, perhaps coming of age here, who, upon setting out into the world on his own, couldn't bear to separate the two old friends and hid the toy in his old home's guts in hopes that they'd never be separated?
Did whoever put it where it was found ever as an adult think back to this toy and wonder whatever happened to it? Or worse, did that person ever think back to it and realize that, when the family moved, he forgot it up in the floor joists above the basement where he hid it?
Is this person even alive today?
Whoever you are, we found your toy, and we think it's just the neatest thing. If you show up on our doorstep and ask for it back, we would gladly give it to you.
dassall
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
A Brief Taste of Power
A new blogger friend I read, Chloe, recently added a post to her blog that triggered a memory from my high school days. I have many memories, most of them happy, but this particular incident gave me a brief look at another side of existence that I had not to that point ever visited, nor did I think I could handle should I have ever visited again.
I was a lanky, uncoordinated kid in high school, with no athletic ability to speak of, unless you consider bowling a sport. And falling. I could fall down like nobody's business. I wasn't the fastest runner, but I wasn't the slowest, either. Because I have an older brother who thought, when I was 10, that he could turn me into the talented baseball player that he had been by screaming at me and dragging me to the park to practice when I just wanted to play in my front yard with my Matchbox cars, I actually had some ability above others in gym class at catching and throwing a ball, but it did me no good to lord that over the girls in the class. Well, MOST of the girls. And, for ability with a bat, I was close to the bottom of the gym class.
Juniors and seniors at our school had the luxury to pick elective gym classes for the last two years of their compulsory schooling, and because I had somehow missed the first day of sign-up for the electives, I wound up with second-semester leftovers fencing, badminton and floor hockey.
Ms. Beeman was the woman who taught us and then oversaw fencing...or should I say who taught us the two most basic moves in fencing and then took a three week working vacation -- some say sleeping off the breakfast booze -- while we hacked away at each other with thin steel rods!
I was embarrassed when badminton started, because the school actually fielded a badminton team...and it was all girls. I thought for sure I would be the only boy in badminton, but there was Gary Block, one year ahead of me as a senior. If I was the Prince of Geeks, Gary was the King. Sorry Gary, if you happen to be reading this (HAH! I kill me! I don't think any of the two of you is Gary Block!). Sadly enough, he fit the stereotype: uncoordinated both physically and socially, excelling in science and Mathletes. I think he was in the Chess Club, too. Fuzzy, almost afro-like hair. And large-framed glasses.
I couldn't understand why the badminton courts had the lines like a tennis court (only smaller). I always thought of baminton as that silly little poof game you played at the beach and at picnics, batting the little cone-shaped "birdie" back and forth over the volleyball net. And that's another thing. Why was the badminton net the same as the tennis net? Everybody in the class seemed to think of badminton the same way as I did. Everybody, that is, except for Gary Block. I learned this when I so gaily batted the birdie across the net toward him and suddenly had to duck as the thing nearly took my eye out on his return! Then I began to understand. Badminton is tennis for people who don't like to chase after the ball when it goes out of bounds! Before long Gary Block and I were the only people in the class who took the game seriously. Leave it to the only two boys in class to make it a competition! The only prblem was, no matter how good I was at it, I could never beat that pipsqueak, that badminton powerhouse, Gary Block! And then, just as I felt the tables turning, as I began a surge that would inevitably result in Gary Block's badminton demise, we switched electives. To floor hockey.
Kids were scattered in all directions, so it wasn't all of us from badminton going to floor hockey. But some others besides me did. Tony Zomparelli was in the floor hockey class. Tony was one of those kids who was very well physically coordinated, but didn't feel the need to show that to people on a playing field in organized, competitive play. His true forte was soccer, but he was not at all shabby at maneuvering a ball at the end of a hockey stick from one end of the hockey floor to the other. And when I say he was not too shabby, I mean he was fantastic. The down side? I was considered the second best. A far distant second best. I always wound up as the center (forward? The guy who got to run anywhere on the floor (help me, Chloe!)), opposite Tony Zomparelli in the same position on the other team. The guy could run circles around me. I mean that literally. I mean, he literally did that to me one day. And my team always lost. No matter who was on it, if Tony Zomparelli wasn't on my team, my team lost.
Then one day the teacher decreed that Tony Zomparelli would be the goalie for his team. I was the (center? forward?) for my team, as usual (ugghh!). So his team had to re-organize, and as their forward/center, they chose none other than Gary Block! I swelled with pride and bravado. I had this guy beat. I was a faster runner, I was better with stickwork, and I was more agile. And I had a score to settle!
Near the end of the game the score was close, thanks to a goal or two scored by Tony Zomparelli, from his position as goalie!! It was down to the last few plays before the class bell would sound. The teacher/referee dropped the ball for our faceoff at center court. Gary and I slapped sticks and managed to knock the ball toward the left side of the court (according to my intended direction of travel). He and I sprinted after it, and I watched as he fell behind in the race. I had the height. I had the legs. I had the speed. Gary, however, had this little aversion to losing, so he aimed his stick right at my knees and thrust it right between them. With the sudden stop of my legs, I quite literally launched into the air and somersaulted, landing on my back, with Gary's stick and my stick launching into the air again as if for an encore. Gasps echoed throughout the gym. My momentum carried me through the roll and I wound up rolling up onto my feet in a crouch.
(When I wrote earlier that I was good at falling, I mean that I excelled at pratfalls. I knew how to throw myself to the floor and make it look like I didn't mean it, and yet I never (okay, seldom) got hurt. I wasn't the most graceful, but I knew how to tumble. And this skill lent itself to times when I really fell. It had become instinct, and when I did lose my balance or my feet, I was able to turn it quickly into a tumble and roll out of it, to witnesses who knew me thinking I had done it on purpose.)
So I sprang back up onto my feet in a crouch, and I was more than a little perturbed at Gary Block for the dirty trick he had just pulled. I didn't think to clobber him or kick him or wring his neck, but I was angry, and my eyes found him. He literally turned sheet white, jumped backwards and put his hands up to his mouth, and he shouted, "Oh, my god! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean it!"
The guy honestly thought I was about to pummel him and, according to the bylaws of The Guy Code, I had every right to pummel him. And I think he knew that, too. It was the first time, the only time, I ever instilled abject, menacing fear in someone, and it felt good. It tasted good. But, somehow, it sufficed. He apologized, quite profusely I might add, and his demeanor let me know that he knew he had done wrong, and he was truly sorry. Had it been one of the many class tough-guys who I had rolled up and shot that look at, there would have been a fight, and I probably would have been the one who was pummeled, cause I ain't no tough-guy.
Inside, I knew Gary's fear at that moment. I had been in his shoes, and for much lesser infractions, cowering before bullies and toughs. I had been there, so with the tables turned, after that first sweet taste of power, I didn't want to be one who made others feel impotent.
He did something stupid, I got angry, he apologized. He almost wet his pants, but he apologized. What was there left to do? So I ran and got my stick, slapped the ball toward the goal, and Tony Zomparelli stopped it. And he probably shot from there and scored on us, and we probably lost.
I should have ripped the guy's tongue out of his head.
Thanks, Chloe, for helping to bring this fond memory to the surface!
dassall
I was a lanky, uncoordinated kid in high school, with no athletic ability to speak of, unless you consider bowling a sport. And falling. I could fall down like nobody's business. I wasn't the fastest runner, but I wasn't the slowest, either. Because I have an older brother who thought, when I was 10, that he could turn me into the talented baseball player that he had been by screaming at me and dragging me to the park to practice when I just wanted to play in my front yard with my Matchbox cars, I actually had some ability above others in gym class at catching and throwing a ball, but it did me no good to lord that over the girls in the class. Well, MOST of the girls. And, for ability with a bat, I was close to the bottom of the gym class.
Juniors and seniors at our school had the luxury to pick elective gym classes for the last two years of their compulsory schooling, and because I had somehow missed the first day of sign-up for the electives, I wound up with second-semester leftovers fencing, badminton and floor hockey.
Ms. Beeman was the woman who taught us and then oversaw fencing...or should I say who taught us the two most basic moves in fencing and then took a three week working vacation -- some say sleeping off the breakfast booze -- while we hacked away at each other with thin steel rods!
I was embarrassed when badminton started, because the school actually fielded a badminton team...and it was all girls. I thought for sure I would be the only boy in badminton, but there was Gary Block, one year ahead of me as a senior. If I was the Prince of Geeks, Gary was the King. Sorry Gary, if you happen to be reading this (HAH! I kill me! I don't think any of the two of you is Gary Block!). Sadly enough, he fit the stereotype: uncoordinated both physically and socially, excelling in science and Mathletes. I think he was in the Chess Club, too. Fuzzy, almost afro-like hair. And large-framed glasses.
I couldn't understand why the badminton courts had the lines like a tennis court (only smaller). I always thought of baminton as that silly little poof game you played at the beach and at picnics, batting the little cone-shaped "birdie" back and forth over the volleyball net. And that's another thing. Why was the badminton net the same as the tennis net? Everybody in the class seemed to think of badminton the same way as I did. Everybody, that is, except for Gary Block. I learned this when I so gaily batted the birdie across the net toward him and suddenly had to duck as the thing nearly took my eye out on his return! Then I began to understand. Badminton is tennis for people who don't like to chase after the ball when it goes out of bounds! Before long Gary Block and I were the only people in the class who took the game seriously. Leave it to the only two boys in class to make it a competition! The only prblem was, no matter how good I was at it, I could never beat that pipsqueak, that badminton powerhouse, Gary Block! And then, just as I felt the tables turning, as I began a surge that would inevitably result in Gary Block's badminton demise, we switched electives. To floor hockey.
Kids were scattered in all directions, so it wasn't all of us from badminton going to floor hockey. But some others besides me did. Tony Zomparelli was in the floor hockey class. Tony was one of those kids who was very well physically coordinated, but didn't feel the need to show that to people on a playing field in organized, competitive play. His true forte was soccer, but he was not at all shabby at maneuvering a ball at the end of a hockey stick from one end of the hockey floor to the other. And when I say he was not too shabby, I mean he was fantastic. The down side? I was considered the second best. A far distant second best. I always wound up as the center (forward? The guy who got to run anywhere on the floor (help me, Chloe!)), opposite Tony Zomparelli in the same position on the other team. The guy could run circles around me. I mean that literally. I mean, he literally did that to me one day. And my team always lost. No matter who was on it, if Tony Zomparelli wasn't on my team, my team lost.
Then one day the teacher decreed that Tony Zomparelli would be the goalie for his team. I was the (center? forward?) for my team, as usual (ugghh!). So his team had to re-organize, and as their forward/center, they chose none other than Gary Block! I swelled with pride and bravado. I had this guy beat. I was a faster runner, I was better with stickwork, and I was more agile. And I had a score to settle!
Near the end of the game the score was close, thanks to a goal or two scored by Tony Zomparelli, from his position as goalie!! It was down to the last few plays before the class bell would sound. The teacher/referee dropped the ball for our faceoff at center court. Gary and I slapped sticks and managed to knock the ball toward the left side of the court (according to my intended direction of travel). He and I sprinted after it, and I watched as he fell behind in the race. I had the height. I had the legs. I had the speed. Gary, however, had this little aversion to losing, so he aimed his stick right at my knees and thrust it right between them. With the sudden stop of my legs, I quite literally launched into the air and somersaulted, landing on my back, with Gary's stick and my stick launching into the air again as if for an encore. Gasps echoed throughout the gym. My momentum carried me through the roll and I wound up rolling up onto my feet in a crouch.
(When I wrote earlier that I was good at falling, I mean that I excelled at pratfalls. I knew how to throw myself to the floor and make it look like I didn't mean it, and yet I never (okay, seldom) got hurt. I wasn't the most graceful, but I knew how to tumble. And this skill lent itself to times when I really fell. It had become instinct, and when I did lose my balance or my feet, I was able to turn it quickly into a tumble and roll out of it, to witnesses who knew me thinking I had done it on purpose.)
So I sprang back up onto my feet in a crouch, and I was more than a little perturbed at Gary Block for the dirty trick he had just pulled. I didn't think to clobber him or kick him or wring his neck, but I was angry, and my eyes found him. He literally turned sheet white, jumped backwards and put his hands up to his mouth, and he shouted, "Oh, my god! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I didn't mean it!"
The guy honestly thought I was about to pummel him and, according to the bylaws of The Guy Code, I had every right to pummel him. And I think he knew that, too. It was the first time, the only time, I ever instilled abject, menacing fear in someone, and it felt good. It tasted good. But, somehow, it sufficed. He apologized, quite profusely I might add, and his demeanor let me know that he knew he had done wrong, and he was truly sorry. Had it been one of the many class tough-guys who I had rolled up and shot that look at, there would have been a fight, and I probably would have been the one who was pummeled, cause I ain't no tough-guy.
Inside, I knew Gary's fear at that moment. I had been in his shoes, and for much lesser infractions, cowering before bullies and toughs. I had been there, so with the tables turned, after that first sweet taste of power, I didn't want to be one who made others feel impotent.
He did something stupid, I got angry, he apologized. He almost wet his pants, but he apologized. What was there left to do? So I ran and got my stick, slapped the ball toward the goal, and Tony Zomparelli stopped it. And he probably shot from there and scored on us, and we probably lost.
I should have ripped the guy's tongue out of his head.
Thanks, Chloe, for helping to bring this fond memory to the surface!
dassall
Monday, November 07, 2005
A Brief (VERY!) Respite...
Not much writing lately. Been busy...and lazy...last week or so. Saw my favorite blogger put one of these up and so I decided to participate likewise.
I'd go step in front of a bus, but I just missed it.
dassall
| This Is My Life, Rated | |
| Life: |  6.6 |
| Mind: |  6.2 |
| Body: |  5.5 |
| Spirit: |  4.3 |
| Friends/Family: | 5.6 |
| Love: | 7.3 |
| Finance: | 7 |
| Take the Rate My Life Quiz | |
I'd go step in front of a bus, but I just missed it.
dassall
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