Sometimes my computer beats me at chess but it’s no match for me at kick boxing. The same goes for my long lost brother Lionel and his Nintendo 64 whenever he plays FIFA ’98.
My older brother and I were great friends growing up. Amid longwinded bouts of friendly horseplay and brotherly buffoonery, we got ourselves into all sorts of trouble and had the time of our lives doing it long before YouTube and Facebook were twinkles in the mischievous eye of technology. We’d climb trees, play catch, ride bikes, catch frogs, build forts, dig in Mom’s garden, throw baseballs, break windows, get into mischief, chase cars, shoot off fireworks, spit watermelon seeds, sing songs around the campfire, eat worms, wear cowboy boots, and ultimately orchestrate and/or participate in all forms of tomfoolery until the summer streetlights warmed up and silently clicked on.
Oh man, the memories are endless! We used sneak out at night and throw leaves into the neighbor’s swimming pool, we used to dress up like Bible characters and ride motorcycles around the neighborhood, shouting commandments and cheering at the top of our lungs as our holy robes billowed and trailed wildly behind us. We used to take our bikes off sweet jumps and get three feet of air; we used to pull the rubber grips off Dad’s golf clubs, climb onto the roof during lightning storms and see who could hold up the nine iron longest. Mom and Dad would just smile with their eyes, sigh melodramatically (in a loving way) and merely carp, “Boys will be boys!”
Lionel and I were best buds… until the accident.
You see, back when I was a young impressionable freshman in high school, I tried out for the football team and (to everyone’s horrified surprise) I was elected quarterback. Growing up in a small town is soOoOo cool! We got to put on old moldy shoulder pads and flop around on the field, we hurled footballs in the air and punched each other when the ref was in the bathroom. We did pushups and counted to ten in gruff quasi-masculine prepubescent voices and we maliciously whipped each other with towels and talked about really disgusting things like rotten mattresses and burning termites with magnifying glasses! Those were the days.
Lionel and I remained best friends (as well as brothers) and life seemed to flux and flow like a molten river of thick chunky honey.
One pre-game friday night, Owatonna was about to pwn Rochester and I was strutting up and down the field, turning perfect cartwheels, winking at crammed bleachers of cute girls and occasionally flashing lightning fast “thumbs ups” to congregations of begrudging, irritating, jealous bros. I was young, I was confident, I was wearing a real mesh jersey withYOUNG stamped on the back… life was good.
Rochester’s barefooted kicker stepped out of his shoes and prepared for the punt. The whistle blew like a stinging silver trumpet from Heaven and suddenly the bloated pigskin was aloft.
I remember actually yelling to my teammates over the roaring crowd, “You guys just take it easy, okay? I totally got this one!” as I puffed out my barrel chest like a proud rooster and strode down the field with my skinny fists raised like antennas to heaven. The air was electric. The bleachers were bursting at the seams, everyone was on their feet, all eyes glued on me. The ball sailed through the air like a Russian missile, aimed perfectly for my muscular arms spread wide like a father ready to embrace prodigal son. My teammates grunted encouragingly from the bench, a sea of attractive females squealed, swooned and theatrically fainted, the sweaty marching band looked on with genuine awe, and even the guy selling hotdogs in the parking lot stopped counting his apron full of wadded dollar bills to watch the amazing catch I was about to perfectly execute.
This was going to be a picture perfect moment, real front page material. I hoped the local newspaper guys and their sweet Canons were poised like cobras ready to strike. I turned one last time and flashed the home crowd a thumbs up and a grin of glistening pearly whites; this was going to be the most defining moment of my entire life!
I turned my eagle eyes back to the ball in the sky and suddenly felt a sickly twist of anguish wrench my stomach. It wasn’t there. The football. The stadium style lights beat down on the field like ultraviolet napalm, burning my retinas. My eyes couldn’t focus… I couldn’t locate the ball.
I tried to keep my cool as two thousand riveted people watched in stunned, suspenseful silence, every muscle tensed. I felt my confident youthful sprint falter, hesitate and slow to a heavy awkward trudge. My eyes burned like fire, dazed by the blinding field lights, my senses staggered by my inability to pinpoint the precious leather projectile hurtling toward me at lightning speed. My legs turned to dead weight shipyard iron, my outstretched arms like soggy wet noodles and my shoulder pads became the equivalent mass of a dead elephant on my back. This was not good.
Suddenly everything became HD. My mind emptied of all thoughts like an evacuated building as my spinning world reduced breakneck speed to a grinding slow motion rate of rotation. The scene played out before my eyes at approximately four frames per second. My large saucer eyes shifted to the motionless crowd and there he was.
My dear brother Lionel, clad in turquoise sweatpants (with elastic around the ankles) and a yellow plastic sombrero atop his head, was holding up one of those funny oversized foam hands with the pointer finger up and he was shouting something at the top of his lungs. His mouth moved up and down in slow motion but I squinted my eyes and slowly made out the words, “LOOK UP, IDIOT!”
A sickening moment of dread cascaded over me before the monumental explosion.
BOING!
Naturally I never saw exactly what occurred but the story would live to be retold a hundred times over throughout my high school years and on into my twenties. Apparently the airborne pigskin rocketed through the atmosphere like a hot shell from an angry mortar, sailed through the sky down the length of the field and bounced off the top of my helmet. Bullzeye! I spun around like a dizzy ignoramus and fell flat on my face. The stunned crowd wasn’t sure if they should laugh or cry. The wonderful thing about this whole story is that I don’t remember any of this actually happening because, of course, I was knocked unconscious and had to be wheeled away on a squeaky gurney… in front of EVERYONE.
I could write a hundred blogs about how embarrassing that day was, but the point here is that Lionel has always been a great brother to me. On that fateful night he tried his best to get my attention and warn me of the impending disaster, and although his warnings were left unnoticed until the last instant, we’re still talking about “the thought that counts,” am I right?
All this to say — I appreciate my dear brother Lionel SO MUCH because no matter what, he’s always there for me… and sometimes he’s there wearing turquoise sweats and a yellow plastic sombrero.
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