Recess Football

Every little boy grew up playing football during recess. Every little boy got in trouble for playing tackle football at least once. It is what kids do, what they look forward to everyday after their tasteless school lunch. Who knew that a sloppy joe could be so terrible, even if it is “extra sloppy”.

 

Everyone knows the scene in a movie where the teams are picked and one team gets all the good guys and the other team gets the circus. In middle school Ace and I used to wait in the lunchroom until the teams got picked. Then we would go out watch the game for a minute and get on the circus team. This team usually consisted of a couple kids that I can remember.  One kid, who was always on our team, had perma-runnybuggas out of each one of his nostrils onto his upper lip. It didn’t matter if it was the Fourth of July this kid was a snot factory that produced a never ending supply of runny,  wet, sticky, greenish yellow goo.  Another kid was the butterball of the team always wanted to play quarterback and as you can imagine wasn’t much good on defense. So we had him rushing the quarterback which is about as useful as a basketball bat. The kid was out of breath by the time he counted to three alligator. To say the least he never pushed the pocket.  We always had these twins on our team, they were more of our athletic team mates. But like most twins in the sixth grade they fought like cats and dogs. About halfway through the game they would be too busy beating the living hell out of each other that they weren’t much good to us. Then there was Mr. ADHD. This kid was and probably still is nuttier then a squirrel turd. I mean literally bat shit crazy. I just remember him being so chaotic and mad at everyone during the game. He was always trying to tackle people and getting knocked around like he was inside a pinball machine. The four square girls could have man handle this wirey little guy.   Every day Blake and I would go play on these guys team. Granted we probably fit right in on.  With Blake being the chunky kid who just grew into his body and me being so tall and skinny that awkward, gangly, or lerpy, would be anything but an understatement. But we never lost a single game, and those guys probably refer to that year of recess football as “The Glory Days”.