"Green-Stick" Submission #24

8^th grade football continued…

(Can you believe I’ve devoted three blog posts to this singular subject?)

green·stick frac·ture

ˌɡrēnstik ˈfrak(t)SHər/

noun

1.    a fracture of the bone, occurring typically in children, in which one side of the bone is broken and the other only bent.

That’s what I had. A “Green-Stick Fracture.”

Bruised, huh Coach Janovick?

“Yeah, but can I still play football?” I wondered as the doctor rubbed his chin and stared at my x-ray.

As if he read my thoughts, “I guess your football season is over, partner. This will take a good four to six weeks to heal.”

My thoughts were racing ahead of him. “Do I have to wear a cast?” I inquired.

“No, I don’t think so.” He explained as my dashed hopes revived. “We will fit you for a splint that you will wear for the next four weeks or so. You can actually take it off at night, after your activities have died down. But absolutely no physical activity involving your wrist until it heals.”

Let’s see… today is Friday. Practice is Monday. I have three days to heal sufficiently. I’ll be fine.

I went straight from the doctor’s office to football practice… wearing my newest fashion accessory on my left wrist. Coach Janovick glanced my way and then did a double-take as he spotted my splint.

He walked over to me. “Guess it was more than a bruise, huh?” He joked. “Did you break it?”

“No.” I lied in an attempt to downplay the injury. “I’ll be ready to go next week.”

Janovick gave me a skeptical look as he smirked and cocked his head.

“Next week?” He asked rhetorically. “I don’t think so, Munson.”

“Seriously. I will be fine.” I said with all the conviction that I could muster.

The following Monday, I sprinted to the locker room as soon as the final bell rang. I was on a mission.

The locker room was downstairs, just off the north side of our old gymnasium. The equipment room was adjacent to the locker room. I turned the door knob and was thankful that it was unlocked. I went in. It wasn’t well lit and it stunk of stale sweat.

I started rummaging through the leftover shoulder pads, helmets, practice pants… not exactly sure what I was looking for. Eventually, I settled on a couple knee pads and a roll of tape.

I carefully removed my splint and began to disrobe. It was amazingly difficult to perform this seemingly simple task with one hand. Reflexively, my left hand wanted to dive into action and help with the process and every time it did, my wrist sent an immediate bulletin to my head saying, “STOP IT! THIS HURTS, YOU IDIOT!”

Putting on my pads and practice clothes promised to be even more difficult and I wondered how in the world I was going to actually practice when I could barely undress myself. I dismissed the question from my mind before my brain had a chance to analyze it. I was going to practice! And the next game, I was going to be wearing my #32 orange jersey, ready to be the best safety that I could be!

My teammates began to filter into the locker room as I awkwardly attempted to pull on my undersized, practice pants. Impossible.

Paul Mott’s locker was right next to mine. He watched in amusement as I tugged on my pants with my right hand… hopping up and down… as though that might help the process.

“Do you need some help, Muns?” He offered.

Paul was a big kid. The biggest kid in our grade. He was gifted with intelligence but athletic ability? … Not so much. That never stopped him from participating in sports.

Paul and I never talked to each other much. (There was no Facebook back then.) We were certainly acquaintances but I wouldn’t classify us as “friends.” And so I was a bit surprised that he was so willing to help me get dressed for practice. I was grateful.

The final detail was to arrange the knee pads into a protective barrier on my fractured wrist. One on the top of my wrist and one on the bottom. Mott handled the tape job too.

“Thanks Paul.” I mumbled.

“Yeah. Any time.” He smiled.

Mott and I played out that ritual every day for the rest of that season. Each day, we got better… more efficient.

I trotted out to the practice field on the northeast corner of the school property and tried to blend in with the other players who were assembled in straight rows, ready for calisthenics. I didn’t say anything… I didn’t want to call any attention to myself. I was hoping that Coach Janovick had forgotten about my silly little injury.

He didn’t forget.

As we began our jumping jacks, I couldn’t get my left arm in sequence with my right arm. It hurt to move it and so I let it hang limply as I continued in the semi-circle motion with only my right arm. I looked like a pair of windshield wipers with only the passenger side wiper in motion.

Janovick walked over to me, gently grabbed my face mask and led me out of the formation, to the side of the practice field. He looked down at Paul’s handiwork on my left wrist.

“Has your doctor cleared you to play?”

“Yes.” I fibbed, as my lying eyes refused to make contact with his.

“So… you’re telling me that if I called your doctor right now, he would tell me that you are cleared to play football less than a week after injuring your wrist?”

“Yes.” I lied… again… less convincingly this time.

He stood there and stared at me for about 10 seconds. Silent. If he was waiting for me to break… and tell him the truth… I wouldn’t… and didn’t. But he knew the truth. One look at me trying to do one-armed jumping jacks was all one, of reasonable intelligence, needed to see.

He sent me to the sidelines to watch.

Tuesday and Wednesday… I tried it again. Mott helped me dress and taped my wrist only to have Coach Janovick send me to the sidelines to watch. Each Wednesday, at the end of practice, the coaches would tell us the various starting teams for Thursday’s games. Punt team, punt receiving team, kick-off team, kick-off receiving team, offense and defense. Not surprisingly, I never heard my name mentioned.

I went home that Wednesday after practice and went straight to my room. I was depressed. I cried… and cried. I sobbed. Nobody knew… nobody cared. I was nobody’s priority during that time in my life.

I remember lying on my bed with red and swollen eyes… and quietly but audibly repeating a phrase over and over. “I can play, coach. Really, I can play. Please let me play.”

Now… you may say that this is strange, over-the-top behavior for a 13-year-old boy. I agree. It is odd. But it happened and it was such deep emotion that I can still feel it in my chest as I write about it today. I’m not a psychologist. I can’t give you a professional analysis. But I can hypothesize that this emotion was tied to the fact that playing on this team was about the only thing in my life, at that time that was positive, fulfilling and fun. And now… it had been ripped away from me.

I don’t remember exactly how many more 8^th grade games that were played that year… maybe six or seven. What I do know is that I didn’t play a single down in any of them. I still showed up and dressed out for every practice but sat on the sidelines most of the time.

My wrist did heal quicker than expected and I was allowed to practice during the final week of the season but what happened next only added insult to injury.

The 7^th grade team had their one and only game that final week. The coaches grabbed me and three additional scrawny 8^th graders and told us that we would be playing with the 7^th graders in their game, since none of us played much during the season. Talk about total humiliation.

Ed Burke, Mark Gibbons, Scott Lombardi and I… playing with the kids. I went from being the starting safety on the 8^th grade team to suiting up with the 7^th grade team. It couldn’t get any worse, could it? Stay tuned.

Before the start of the 7^th grade game against arch-rival, Woodward-Granger, Coach Janovick hauled the four 8^th graders to the center of the field to meet with the officials and the opposing coach. Initially, I thought “Cool! They are making us the team captains and we are going out for the coin toss!”

Not so fast. The purpose of the little pow-wow was so that Coach, in the spirit of full disclosure, could tell the officials and the other coach that he planned to use four 8^th graders in the 7^th grade game. We were brought out as props… visuals… so that they could see for themselves that we didn’t pose much of a physical threat on the football field. So humiliating. Could anything else go wrong? Stay tuned… again.

The officials glanced at us, shrugged and appeared apathetic. The opposing coach, however, was indignant that Coach Janovick would blur the lines of propriety by inserting illegal players into his line-up. He was willing to compromise, however. Once the game reached the fourth quarter, if one team or the other was clearly in control… then… and ONLY then, could we insert the 8^th graders.

Woodward-Granger took control of that game early and never came close to relinquishing the lead. I saw the field for one series of downs with less than two minutes to play in the game. I played right guard on the offensive line and got pushed around by a chubby 7^th grader wearing a green and yellow uniform.

That is how my illustrious football career came to a crashing conclusion. I never played organized football again. I had worked all summer to get in shape and showed so much desire even while injured… to no avail.

This was a microcosm of my life at that time. A bitter snap-shot. Another disappointment.