When I was your age...


Larry Hawgin Fish-breath and I were busy cleaning guns for the coming
deer season when some of the football players walked in.

They flopped down and complained about the pains which come with being a
football player.

You dont know pain, I said. Youre not old enough.

Hawgin rolled up his pants leg. He slapped his leg.

Pain! Pain, Im telling you, he rolled his pants leg back down.

What pain? You slapped your leg, one of the boys said.

Dern tootin and it liked to have killed me. When I was your age, I played
football. Our coach had extra nerves surgically grafted to my legs so I
could feel the field better. Even wearing pants hurts, he said.

Right. You guys have a wonderful coaching staff. Our coach was mean, I
said.

Our School Board, back then, got ahold of the DNA from the Marquis de Sade
and cloned him to be our coach, Hawgin said. You look up mean in the
dictionary and the picture of Coach de Sade will slap you.

When I was your age, Coach de Sade made us play through the pain. In fact,
he used to break our legs every Friday night before the game. Said it made
us hungry for a victory, I said.

Yall just have to run laps, Hawgin said. Coach de Sade made us run to
the game. Once we played a team up near Atlanta and we had to leave Thursday
morning. Ran all the way. I-75 wasnt finished either. We had to run on
Highway 41, and it detoured through Alabama.

We had to play some team on the other side of the Okefenokee. We had to run
through the swamp. We couldnt take canoes, I said. Coach de Sade said if
a gator killed any of us, that player would be running laps for the rest of
his life. You go to our home field now and Marcus is still running laps. He
had to run past the principal when we graduated to get his diploma.

And yall only have to run through a giant paper banner, Hawgin said.
When I was your age, we had to run through a brick wall.

And we had to build the brick wall before practice on Monday evenings, I
said.

And when we played on the road, we had to load the brick wall on a flatbed
trailer. We had to pull the trailer to the game, couldnt use a truck,
unload the wall on that teams field and then run through it, Hawgin said.

I remember one game when Mo was hit so hard his spine collapsed. All you
could see of him was a helmet with arms sticking out the earholes and a pair
of cleats sticking out the face mask. I said.

We used him as a kicking tee. The ref started to tell us we didnt have
enough men on the field for kickoff because Mo was holding the ball,
Hawgin said.

One time my head got ripped off. Coach de Sade came on the field, tore out
my Achilles tendon and tied my head back on. He told me to quit being a wimp
and get back in the game, I said.

I looked up from cleaning my rifle. Hey. Whered the boys go? I asked.

If Coach de Sade was here, I said, letting the sentence trail out
unfinished. When I was their age...

You never were their age. Besides, theyre gone, Hawgin said. Pass me the
WD40.