The Weekly Shriek -- Football Memories

It's that time of year - footballs are in the air, even as we speak.

If you think about it, sports are closely intertwined with our memories - like music and television shows and smells. "I love Lucy" makes me think about crushing Cuban grapes in an Italian hot tub - and "Ed Sullivan" reminds me of dancing dogs and singing beetles. "Born to be Wild" conjures up body painting in the park and "Can't get No Satisfaction" reminds me of Larry Wikoff. Whenever I smell hotdogs, I remember when Franco Harris performed a perfect Fosbury Flop or Nadia Comaneci hit eight hundred home runs or Mohammed Ali roped a dope. Ah. Those were the days.

However, nothing says autumn like football - and whenever you say football, I have to brush the memories away like flies in Kevin Costner's cornfield.

When I was in high school, our team was 'The Blue Buffaloes.' In the four years that I was there, they never lost a game. This was a source of great pride in the town. Everyone strutted around with their chins and chests stuck out and their stomachs sucked in. The local radio station held programs discussing this extraordinary chain of wins. Motorcycle cops gunned their engines, sounded their sirens and waved whenever they saw members of the team. Merchants put big signs in the windows of their stores saying, "GO BIG BLUE!" All of this attention was so intoxicating that everyone involved began to think they were super heroes instead of a bunch of kids.

The two-dozen players were either the most popular or the best looking boys in the school. The cheerleaders were the ten prettiest girls who could do either the splits or cartwheels. There was a drill team of about twenty of our prettiest girls who couldn't do the splits or cartwheels. There was a drum and bugle corps of about thirty nerdy guys and a pep club consisting of about a hundred kids with braces and zits. Then there were the rest of us who didn't 'get'football. We showed up at the games to make rude noises, eat hotdogs and make-out under the bleachers.

It was the last game of the season in my senior year. We had extra kids on field because it was also Homecoming - which I also didn't 'get' since the team never really went anywhere - but I digress. You had the absolute prettiest girl and her friends all dressed up in strapless formals shivering on a dais near the twenty-yard line. The pep club sat in the stands wearing white gloves and holding pieces of blue and white cardboard ready to spell out impassioned messages. The drum and bugle corps positioned themselves into two rows in front of the Queen and her court. The drill team gathered at the far end of the field holding an enormous hoop papered with a big picture of a ferocious blue buffalo snorting fire.

Here's what was supposed to happen. The cheerleaders would start everyone cheering by posing in front of the hoop and shaking their pompoms. Once the crowd was red in the face from screaming, the players all dressed up in their clean blue and white uniforms with huge shoulder pads and shiny helmets would come running out onto the field, burst through the paper hoop and trot up to the Queen for a pre-game ceremony that would be broadcast on the local radio station.

It was time.

The drummers started drumming. The buglers bugled. The drill team shook the big hoop. The cheerleaders leapt into the air and/or did cartwheels. The Queen and her court stood and applauded. The pep club spelled out, "GO BUFFALOES". Parents focused their Super 8 cameras on the snarling blue buffalo. The rest of us blew into long plastic instruments that sounded like foghorns. The team came running out from the side of the field to the end zone and through the goal posts. The smaller boys were at the head of the pack. The first kid hit the paper hoop and bounced back. The player behind him tripped over him and went through the paper helmet first.

The rest of the team kept right on coming, falling over the boys that were down and piling up on the bottom of the hoop. The tug of bodies on the bottom of the ring caused it to be jerked out of the hands of the girls on the drill team. The hoop toppled over and crashed onto the heads of the leaping cheerleaders. The girls backed away from the onrush of bodies and knocked over the drummers and buglers who of course backed into the dais where the Queen and her court stood.

Don't you just LOVE football season?