Run Like the Wind

Remember when you were a kid and playing outside in the cold night air was fun?  It didn’t matter what the game was, or if there even was a game.  Any kind of general debauchery that would allow you to hang out with the neighborhood kids until your mama called you in was good enough. 

I got to thinking about this very thing the other night while I was shivering in the Florida cold, which to most of the rest of the country, wouldn’t even qualify as cold.  I had to be outside.  I wasn’t playing.  Maybe that was the difference? 

Anyway, I was about eight or nine years old.   Not last night.  But, oh, about thirty plus years ago.   I was the baby of the neighborhood kids.  Most were closer to my big brother’s age, teenagers.  The age difference didn’t bother me, it just made me more determined to hang out and find my place amongst the reverie.

This one night, we were playing football, touch or tackle, I don’t remember.   We could play at night cause we had a streetlight in the corner of the yard that cast just enough light for us to see the ball and each other.   And sometimes the moon was out, too.  I wasn’t doing much, just trying to at least stand on the right side of the field, far enough away so there was little chance I’d ever had to actually touch the football, lest the inevitable touch or tackle.   But I was on the team.

The team included Joel Hopper, the neighborhood football hero. And the neighborhood baseball hero.  He was my brother’s best friend.   Everyone called him, “Hopper”.  He lived across the road from us in a red brick house with his mother.  He wore a white jersey to school with number 55 in black.  Once, he let me wear it on “jersey day”.   I almost had a crush on him.

As the night wore on, I wasn’t getting much action, just trying to follow what was going on, at least run in the same direction my team was running. 

Feeling pretty useless, I was just about to go inside, even before Mama called me in.  But then something knocked me out of my stupor and I looked down and saw the football in my grubby hands. 

What the heck?!

Gut instinct…okay, fear, told me I’d better hold on tight and get moving.  Somehow, I took a step forward and pretty soon I was darting right and left, actually getting closer and closer toward the goal line, to that street light in the corner of the yard. 

Halfway down the “field”, I was panting and gasping for air.  Then I felt something tugging at the back of my neck, lifting me up ever so lightly by the cloth of my jacket.  It was Hopper!  I was on his team after all.   He didn’t have to be a genius to know that with my then short and slow legs, I’d never make it to the goal line without being clobbered first. 

So when I thought he might just drag me in, I didn’t resist.  Before I knew it, I was running so fast my feet were barely touching the ground.  I was flying. He wasn’t dragging me, or pulling me—he was just running alongside me daring me to keep up with him, his gentle steady tug propelling me onward. 

I made it.  I hadn’t been tackled, crushed by teenagers, or mangled in any way.  I was just there, holding the football in the air with both hands over my head.  There was a lot of hooping and hollering, too.

My touchdown was the end of the game.  I was ready to go inside now.  My hands were so numb from the cold I couldn’t feel my fingers as I washed the dirt off with warm, Palmolive soapy water.  I couldn’t feel any part of my body below my neck.  All the feeling was in my head.  I had tasted victory and it was sweet. 

I’m glad I waited and didn’t go inside when I’d started to feel like my being there wasn’t making any difference at all.    I would have never had my moment in the neighborhood football spotlight.  My team might not have won. 

Now I’d like to say I never forgot that feeling, that I’d figured out what the real lesson was and applied it to my subsequent life, but that wouldn’t be quite true.  My brain though, as predictably unpredictable as it is, flashed me that scene lately in a dream.   They say dreams help us figure out ways to deal with issues in our lives, things we’re trying to figure out. 

That dream was what got me thinking about that night and my touchdown--- and games, and heroes, and people helping other people win. 

©2005