A Common Pornography: A Memoir

Tackle Football

Matt and I played football a lot growing up. Most of the time we’d play with the neighbor kids in Miss O’Hara’s yard, which was about half the size of a real football field. We’d ask her first and most of the time she’d say yes, unless she had company and didn’t want to hear all of our yelling. We called her yard O’Hara Stadium. We had to be careful because there was a water faucet sticking up, about groin-level, right in the middle of the field. Amazingly, we avoided any serious injuries there.

I loved playing football but played only one season in high school. I didn’t like having to memorize plays and I didn’t like getting hit. I was a wide receiver and I caught one pass the whole season (a screen play). I preferred the backyard style of game played with the neighborhood kids or, later on, with Matt and his friends, who were all older and much bigger than me. I’d tag along each Saturday to Underwood Park. One of Matt’s friends was the older brother of a short, stocky girl named Jane who was trying to get permission to play on the high school football team. She’d play with us sometimes and she was really good, not afraid to hit and be hit (we played tackle). But one week she ran into the pole that marked the back of one of the end zones. It knocked her out and she stopped coming around after that.

My size worked to my advantage with these guys. I was speedy and elusive, the guy you’d have to watch out for on the “long bomb” route. Or I’d catch short passes and run out of bounds before I could get clobbered.