Velociworld

Football with the Senator

It was a sunny, crisp autumn Saturday. Not as crisp as bacon; more the crispness of lettuce. I was outside in the front yard of the farmhouse, attempting, in my 11 year old way, to learn how to kick a football. To punt, precisely.

"Boy!" I heard, while chasing my errant punt.

"Football is the game, is it? You got to be a football hero, to get along with the beautiful gals!" the Senator sang, as he walked out of the front door towards me. I tensed. Even at 11 I knew that song was like Roaring Twenties vintage, way older than the Senator. But evidently he liked it, or he surmised it was a satisfactory substitute for the birds/bees talk. As I recall, that talk took place three years later, when he asked me if I knew what a rubber was. I said Yes, he nodded gravely, and we successfully weathered that passage into manhood.

I took my eye off the ball there, Intrepids. Sorry.

So, the old man said "Let me have that football, son. Kicking, are we? Yes. I was a hell of a kicker in my day." And I believed him, because I'd seen clippings or something, where he was the pole-vaulting champion of the entire city of Atlanta when he was 15. Something like that. Track and field, I recall.

So the Senator assumes posture, and attempts to punt the football. He shanks it horribly. Now, he was only 43 or so then, but he hadn't exercised in 25 years I reckon, and he was overweight. Greying crew-cutted 250 ell bee overweight.

"Damn!" he hollered. "Cockfrigamsumpin!" Out of practice, he assured me. "Fetch me that ball again, boy," he commanded. He attempted several more kicks, each more spastic, more futile, more embarrassing for me than the last. He finally spiked the ball triumphantly, with finality and disdain.

"Why, there ain't no air in that ball, boy. They don't fill 'em up like they used to. In my day a football was like a car tire with a hundred pounds of pressure in it. Fellas used to lose a foot kicking a really tight ball sometimes. They'd explode if you weren't careful. Wait right here."

He went in the house, and returned with a drink. And pulled a chair off the porch. "Now you kick, boy." He lit a Kool while I flailed about, shanking my own punts up and down the yard. The Senator found it very amusing. Every time I shanked another kick he would guffaw, and literally slap his thigh. Finally he'd had enough.

"Damn, boy. You're worse than me! And I can claim old age!"

And his annual bonding was done, and he dragged the chair back on to the porch, and no doubt redoubled his spree drinking efforts.

I kicked the ball a few more times, but my heart wasn't in it anymore. Because I had seen the future that afternoon, and knew that genes win out. I was going to be a suck-assed punter the rest of my life. It was preordained. The big question was, what else was I predestined to be?

I think about that afternoon from time to time, and hate to admit I struggle more often than not to mold myself into someone, something, that is my old man, and not my old man. We all want to inherit the good traits, and not the bad. But the truth is, we are what we are. I figure if I avoid the abysmal depths, I won't miss the exhilarating highs so much. Just a thought.