When I was younger football was always the game I played the most. There's no need for a hoop or a net or a large field, it can be played in any type of weather, and generally even players with the smallest of talent can contribute somehow. Most of the games I was involved in occured on the streets in front of one of our houses. The boundaries were pretty easily defined as the sidewalks, first downs were reaching a certain parked car, and the end zone was usually a sewer cap or tree/telephone pole.
Since these early games were played on concrete and tar, there was no tackling and opponents were captured by a two-hand touch method. Though there was no tackling in the streets(except on snowy days) there were still plenty of physical moments, like the time I got hit in the mouth and lost a crown tooth in the back of my mouth(which never grew back). As my high school years wrapped up and my college tenure began, a group of us banded together and would play tackle football on certain weekends on the huge lawns of a mental hospital nearby. The grounds of this area were perfect, except for the goose droppings during certain seasons when geese would fly down from up north to ride out the winter. Some weeks only eight of us would converged, but most of the time these games were well populated with nearly twenty different people playing. There were a number of different characters there as well, one time someone we thought was a mental patient at the facility appeared out of nowhere in the pouring rain and asked to join us. Then there was a group of Dominican brothers we simply referred to as "The Dominicans" we relied on if he needed extra people in a last minute effort to put teams together. I had a few shinning moments in some of these games, but I wasn't as nearly good as I was playing two-hand touch street games.
These mental facility games were very taxing on the body and it would take nearly a full week to heal, but then by that time it was Sunday again and time to take another beating. There was one person who broke his wrist, there were another two players who ended up in a fight that had to be broken up, there was never a dull moment. Unfortunately, by the second year of college most of the group had fallen out of touch, either from flunking out of the school most of us went to, or simply not wanting to get up early anymore on a Sunday and take a beating. With the group gone, also gone was my pick-up football game career. Of course, there were future games for me sprinkled here and there over the years, including an interesting beach tackle game, but the frequency was infintely less than my more youthful days. This past Christmas, which was celebrated at my uncle's house, my cousin informed me of a tackle football game they were having the next day and invited me to join. It had been nearly ten years since those tackle games I used to play in at the mental hospital, could I take that punishment anymore?
Without much hesitation or thought, I agreed to play and was looking forward to see if I could still play reasonably well. There was about twelve of us who assembled on the offical football field of New Rochelle High School. It was the first time I played on an actual football field, but we only used part of the field as there wasn't nearly enough of us to play on the normal dimensions. The weather was chilly, windy, with an annoying sun beaming light into everyone's eyes. The ball we played with was bulky and without much grip. All these conditions usually spell bad news when I play, and that's how it turned out. I didn't do much in the game, probably mainly because I was a new face in the group and people likely kept forgetting which team I was on. I had two passes thrown in my direction, which I dropped, but I did have an interception. I made a few tackles, one of which cost me getting kicked in the head, but I also missed some tackles as well. The other team seemed to be scoring more touchdowns on my team and after a while we all just stopped keeping score and just played for fun. I was out of breath about ten minutes into the game and was sucking for air the rest of the hour and half we played.
My legs were in much pain, and I knew for a fact the worst of it would be the following days as the rest of my body would react as my legs were. Sure enough, in the following couple of days I felt I had the body of a hundred year old. I couldn't move at all, and simple things like getting dressed or rolling out of bed became a physical challenge. It was about the same type of pain from playing in those games ten years, but the good news is I didn't have to also limp to classes for the whole week as I used to. It's hard to determine if it was all worth it, playing for ninety minutes, only to have body pain for the rest of the week. I didn't know the answer ten years ago and I still don't know the answer, but if I kept going back then the answer must have been yes. It was good to be running, sweating, falling down, getting a kick, the stuff I had been missing out on since I left college and entered the workforce of getting home late and using weekends to sleep.
The only thing I had not missed was the little presents left to us by the geese...
Since these early games were played on concrete and tar, there was no tackling and opponents were captured by a two-hand touch method. Though there was no tackling in the streets(except on snowy days) there were still plenty of physical moments, like the time I got hit in the mouth and lost a crown tooth in the back of my mouth(which never grew back). As my high school years wrapped up and my college tenure began, a group of us banded together and would play tackle football on certain weekends on the huge lawns of a mental hospital nearby. The grounds of this area were perfect, except for the goose droppings during certain seasons when geese would fly down from up north to ride out the winter. Some weeks only eight of us would converged, but most of the time these games were well populated with nearly twenty different people playing. There were a number of different characters there as well, one time someone we thought was a mental patient at the facility appeared out of nowhere in the pouring rain and asked to join us. Then there was a group of Dominican brothers we simply referred to as "The Dominicans" we relied on if he needed extra people in a last minute effort to put teams together. I had a few shinning moments in some of these games, but I wasn't as nearly good as I was playing two-hand touch street games.
These mental facility games were very taxing on the body and it would take nearly a full week to heal, but then by that time it was Sunday again and time to take another beating. There was one person who broke his wrist, there were another two players who ended up in a fight that had to be broken up, there was never a dull moment. Unfortunately, by the second year of college most of the group had fallen out of touch, either from flunking out of the school most of us went to, or simply not wanting to get up early anymore on a Sunday and take a beating. With the group gone, also gone was my pick-up football game career. Of course, there were future games for me sprinkled here and there over the years, including an interesting beach tackle game, but the frequency was infintely less than my more youthful days. This past Christmas, which was celebrated at my uncle's house, my cousin informed me of a tackle football game they were having the next day and invited me to join. It had been nearly ten years since those tackle games I used to play in at the mental hospital, could I take that punishment anymore?
Without much hesitation or thought, I agreed to play and was looking forward to see if I could still play reasonably well. There was about twelve of us who assembled on the offical football field of New Rochelle High School. It was the first time I played on an actual football field, but we only used part of the field as there wasn't nearly enough of us to play on the normal dimensions. The weather was chilly, windy, with an annoying sun beaming light into everyone's eyes. The ball we played with was bulky and without much grip. All these conditions usually spell bad news when I play, and that's how it turned out. I didn't do much in the game, probably mainly because I was a new face in the group and people likely kept forgetting which team I was on. I had two passes thrown in my direction, which I dropped, but I did have an interception. I made a few tackles, one of which cost me getting kicked in the head, but I also missed some tackles as well. The other team seemed to be scoring more touchdowns on my team and after a while we all just stopped keeping score and just played for fun. I was out of breath about ten minutes into the game and was sucking for air the rest of the hour and half we played.
My legs were in much pain, and I knew for a fact the worst of it would be the following days as the rest of my body would react as my legs were. Sure enough, in the following couple of days I felt I had the body of a hundred year old. I couldn't move at all, and simple things like getting dressed or rolling out of bed became a physical challenge. It was about the same type of pain from playing in those games ten years, but the good news is I didn't have to also limp to classes for the whole week as I used to. It's hard to determine if it was all worth it, playing for ninety minutes, only to have body pain for the rest of the week. I didn't know the answer ten years ago and I still don't know the answer, but if I kept going back then the answer must have been yes. It was good to be running, sweating, falling down, getting a kick, the stuff I had been missing out on since I left college and entered the workforce of getting home late and using weekends to sleep.
The only thing I had not missed was the little presents left to us by the geese...
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