Hello hello hello! And how is it you are? My British accent is still a work in progress. Have you ever noticed that Tuesday and hump day have something in common? You didn’t know? Yup! They’re both days in the work week, that by the time you get to them, you’re usually worn out. Working people, talk to me!
Today I feel like going story-ish. I like a good short story. I hope you do too. Once upon a time… Oh, you know that one. Shucks! Guess I’m going to have to type up something else right quick. Okay, how about this?
When playing in a football game where your team has zero points and the team you’re playing has two touchdowns already, it’s enough to make any football player a little grumpy. In a case like that, at almost any age, a football player would most likely agree to eat a plate of stewed vegetables, or babysit a brat, just to put six points on the scoreboard. From professional football on down to the pee wee level, nobody wants to be the team that lost without scoring a single point. Not even if they were playing a football game in their street clothes at a neighborhood park on a Saturday morning.
“Man, Hogie, these guys are really tough!” Renny Watson complained. Renny was eleven years old, four foot-nine, built like a mini-half back, and about as easy to get along with as orchestra musician at a Rock concert. He played the equivalent of an offensive guard. His opinion of the team they were playing, his Parkland Titans teammates couldn’t agree with him more. After only fifteen minutes into the game, they had only been able to score less than one point. Right now, standing around in what could only be described as a lop-sided huddle, Renny and his four teammates were sweaty, tired, and gulping air. One of the boys, however, had enough air in his lungs to add to Renny’s opinion.
“Tough? I really wasn’t sure Renny. Thanks for helping me make up my mind,” Hogie Reynolds said in a bad mood. “I’ve been trying to block that big kid over there the whole game, and he’s gotten past me to get to Tilden I don’t know how many times.” Everybody in the huddle was use to hearing Hogie Reynold’s squeaky eleven year old voice. Hogie was medium smallish, four-foot eight, and played the position of running back. “Yeah Hogie, It ain’t like we ain’t been noticing. He’s been puttin Tilden in the nap sack for like the last who knows how many minutes,” twelve year old Deke Jones accused.
Deke Jones was the Parkland Titans’ wide receiver. He was twelve, and an impressive five-foot six. He didn’t have the best moves downfield, but he could catch a football out of the air like a frog catching a fly. -Which Tilden Moore, the Parkland Titans’ quarterback could care less about at the moment.
“Okay! That’s it! Everybody shut your snack holes! This is my dinkin huddle!” Tilden Moore snapped.
“Hey Tilden. Take it easy man. Everybody’s tired. You don’t have to talk like that,” twelve year old Georgio Sanchez explained. Georgio was the center. He was five-foot one, a hundred and thirty-five pounder, and the nicest guy on the team.
“Yeah Georgio? The score’s twelve zip, their favor. If you wanna tell me how we gonna fix our little problem, talk all you want. Otherwise…” Tilden made a gesture to all the boys to hold their lips together or otherwise. The fact that their quarterback was dialed up to the point of either throwing one of his famous fits, or refusing to quarterback anymore, helped them to choose to cooperate.
The temperature was a sunny seventy-nine degrees and climbing. That and the pressure of scoring at least two touchdowns, in a miracle amount of time, caused Tilden to wipe his forehead on his personal towel, and take a quick look around at his mixed height, mixed aged teammates. He sensed the time was just right for a quarterback to team pep talk. Tilden was also twelve, and looked like a mini-pro quarterback with big ears.
“Look guys. I figure we got three more minutes left until we all got to go home for lunch. So let me do all the talking in the huddle from now on. Can I get a yeah on that?” Everybody nodded yeah.
“Sorry for getting talky a little while ago Tilden,” Hogie apologized. “So what you wanna try?” Tilden claps a hand on Hogie’s shoulder and looks him square in the eyes.
“Well for one thing, Hogie, I want you to switch with Renny, and play guard, and Renny you play running back. Hey! Will you guys just shut up and let me finish! It’s gonna be okay, cause I got an idea I wanna try.” “Man Tilden, it’s fourth down, and you’re gonna get caught. We’re playing real flag football, not the fantasy kind. Hogie can’t block that big kid,” Deke growled at Tilden. “What did I just say about talking in my huddle Deke?” “Yeah but Tilden. How we gonna win if you–” “You just let me worry about it Deke. Okay?” Tilden suggested.
“Hey you losers wanna play some football, or what?! Let’s go!” someone on the opposing team hollered out. Everyone from Tilden to Georgio turned to face the owner of those words. “Dude, don’t have a girly-fit! We’re coming!” Tilden said disrespectfully. After which, he quickly turned back to the huddle, as did his teammates.
“Alright guys, here’s what we’re gonna do. Georgio, you snap me the ball. Hogie, you let your guy through and…” This announcement drew an immediate interruption from Renny. “Whataya mean, let his guy through? Tilden, are you crazy? That ain’t gonna work.”
Tilden looked at Renny as though he were looking at his little sister asking him to play with his brand new Xbox. Then he answered back. “Man, Renny, for the very last time… Unless you want to quarterback, I run this huddle. Yeah?”
“Alright, yeah! I got it!” Renny snarled. Tilden let his eyes flip up towards his forehead and sighed. and then continued to explain.
“Finally! Okay. Georgio snaps me the ball. Hogie lets the big kid through. Then we zub… zub… zub…zub.“
“Tilden, are you serious?” the boys ask like a choir. Tilden replies back with a tensed up smile-less face. “…As serious as my mom is about me taking a bath every night. Now shut up and listen. Zub…zub…zub…”
Time had gotten short. Everyone was wired up and a little hungry. A bird called out from somewhere in the trees that surrounded the Parkland Community Park. It was either time for football glory to happen or they were probably going to finish this game shamefully scoreless. All the boys fixed their eyes on Tilden to lead them to either of the two.
“Okay. Everybody know what to do?” Tilden asked in a hurry. Everyone checked in, saying that they did. “Alright then guys, let’s do it! We go on Set!”
The boys broke the huddle and walked up to the scrimmage line. Taking their places on the line of scrimmage, each boy was determined to do his best. They all knew that if this play didn’t work, they were not going to leave the park without being joked and laughed at. But even so, they each planned to go out kickin and spittin.
Tilden crouches down and sets his hands under Georgio’s rump to receive the ball. He hollers out the cadence, and finally the word that will alert them all when to start the play. “Zero and a pair of sevens! See-tree-p-o! Down! Set!” The trigger word spoken, Georgio hikes the ball to Tilden, and Hogie stands aside to let his man through the line of scrimmage.
The large kid, all hundred twenty-eight pounds of him, goes straight for Tilden, like a twelve year old after a fully loaded pizza. But right before the charging boy ends up putting the finishing touches on sacking Tilden for the umpteenth time, Tilden flips the ball to Renny, who throws a short lateral pass to Deke, who holds the ball long enough for the defense to hurry over and snatch the red handkerchief hanging out of his waistband. But before that happens, he tosses the ball back to Renny, who immediately makes a full scale ambulance charge for the end-zone.
Everybody on the defense was whamoed! To them it was like watching pro football game in progress! Some of the boys on defense were frozen in place trying to figure out whether or not they should call time out or call a penalty!
But this wasn’t pro football. This was simply playground football. All the big league regulations of pro football weren’t strictly followed among this group of football-zealous pre-teen boys.
Renny was tall and muscularly filled out for his age. He was hardly what anyone would call track star material. Tilden hadn’t chosen Renny because he had dazzling running back moves. But he did choose him because, in a straight line, Renny could run like Usain Bolt Junior.
Five yards, past the line of scrimmage, Renny ran unmolested. For a short second and a half the defense witnessed this state of affairs while standing glued to the playground grass. Was a lineman really hustling his way towards their endzone? They had never seen anything like this before! But if the Parkland Mini Eagles had anything to say about it, it wasn’t something that was going to go on for very long. The chase was on!
Renny was still accelerating. He zoomed past one defender, who was trying to close in on his right, but the defender couldn’t keep up. Another defender tried to head him off on his left, and for a few strides, was able to keep pace with Renny’s roadrunner strides. But in a desperate attempt to make a last second effort to reach Renny’s flag, the Mini-Eagle dove for it and missed.
This left only one other defender, who was directly ahead of Renny. This Mini Eagle had a can’t miss angle for making a touchdown saving grab. Renny veered to his left to try to avoid being put under strip-flag arrest. But the other kid was not only able to make an instant adjustment, but quickly closed the distance between them. He was flat out grinning now. He knew he had a lock on Renny, and would either grab his flag or force Renny to run out of bounds.
As the Mini Eagle defender closed to within five yards of Renny, Renny could feel his six seconds of being a football hero coming to an unsatisfying end. But Renny wasn’t worried about it, because Tilden had planned for this very moment. Just as the last defender leaped to turn Renny into a strip-flag statistic, Renny casually flipped the ball back over his head.
No matter how much the Mini Eagle wished he could defy the laws governing changing directions at high speed, he couldn’t. The only satisfaction he had was that he had been able to strip Renny’s handkerchief from his waistband. Neither he nor Renny were in any position gather up the loose fumble now. They both had run out of bounds. The ball, however, was a lively jumbling bumbling thing of bouncing energy, free for anyone to come and pick up and possibly score. Someone like, for instance, Deke Jones.
The ball was bounce/rolling its way towards the opposite sideline when he came along and snared it on the run. But not before he went through the process of a few juggling attempts.
No one else was near Deke. All of the boys on the Mini Eagle defense were way back, closer to the line of scrimmage. Almost every Mini-Eagle defender had supposed that catching the little blond haired kid was going to be too easy. He hardly looked like anyone who could run at jet take-off speed. But he had them believing now. The bigger surprise was when they saw the boy carelessly tossing the ball away. -Making all the Mini-Eagles that he had just run past wish that they had at least jogged behind just for the sake of what if.
Only briefly did they have any big hope of recovering the on purpose fumble, taking place twenty yards or so from their endzone. But that hope instantly vaporized the moment they saw one of the Parkland Titans, who had been trailing behind the blond haired kid, scoop up the fumble and run for six.
Five minutes later, Tilden, Hogie, Renny, Georgio, and Deke are on their way to Tilden’s house for lunch with big grins on their faces. Sure, they had lost the game. But remembering the highlight of their trick play, and the admiration they had gotten for it from their opponents, made losing not so much painful as it had been fun. For them it couldn’t have been much better than if they had won a championship. Because for a few days, they knew that the Parkland Mini Eagles would remember the day they had played the Parkland Titans.
You guys have been really great readers! And I thank you very much for this. May God be as charitable to you as he has been to me!