I woke up Friday morning to Devon jumping on my bed. This could only mean that he just got back from The Bake Shop with a dozen donuts. Every Friday during school, my mother rewarded us with a breakfast of glazed deliciousness.

“C’mon Ben, get up, get up, get up! It’s donut day,” were the first words I heard.

“If you get off of me, it’ll be a lot easier,” I informed the little bastard while bench pressing him and putting him on the floor. As if he were a super bounce, as soon as his feet hit the floor, he was back on top of me. It became instantly apparent that he had already been into the sugary goodness.

“How many have you had?” I asked like a cop who had just pulled over a drunk.

“Three!” he screamed.

“Devon! Get in here,” Mom hollered from the kitchen, getting him out of my hair. I stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed my allotted three donuts and a glass of milk. I started with the jelly filled, moved on to the cream filled, and finished as always with the strawberry frosted with sprinkles.

“Are you ready for the game tonight?” Devon asked.

“If they put me in tonight. I’m on the field goal squad, so if we score, I’ll see the field. Other than that, I’ll probably be riding pine,” I answered dejectedly. The coaches were only interested in practice players, which is something I have never been. Therefore, I never spent much time on the field during games. I always made things happen when on the field, but the coaches saw me as a liability. If I made a mistake, it was usually pretty big. Much like in the rest of my life.

“I’ve got to get your little brother to school. I’m off tonight, so me and Dad are going to your game. Try to keep your head up. I know how you get during football season,” Mom said while whirling around the kitchen gathering her purse, paperwork, and Thermos of coffee. “I love you. Have a good day.”

“I love you too, Ma,” I reciprocated. “See you around 9:30 Devon.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said on his way out.

As soon as I heard the automatic garage door opener stop, a wave of excitement passed over me. I immediately got the self-titled Korn album and put it on the stereo in the living room. I turned the volume knob about half way and headed to the bathroom for a shower scream session. Twenty minutes later my fingers were wrinkled, my throat was itching, and I was ready to face the rest of my day.

While the night’s game was not at home, it was in Magnolia which is only a fifteen minute drive. This was important to me, because it meant I would be able to get to the post-game party in good time. I put on my game day uniform: khakis, a white button-down shirt, and my psychedelic Jimi Hendrix tie. We were required to wear neck ties, so I bought the loudest ties I could find. Any little way I could stick it to The Man.

* * * *

As ignorant as I thought it was, I did enjoy the mood of the town on football game days. The whole town was electrified and on edge. You could practically feel the energy flow through you as soon as you stepped outside. I made my way to Jefferson Elementary for my PALS class. As I walked the halls toward my assigned classroom, I noticed that about 80% of the kids were dressed in Cherokee Hills t-shirts. Everywhere I turned was hunter green. I wasn’t sure if the feeling in my stomach was pride or nausea, but a quick fart made me realize it was neither.

The teacher I was assigned to was borderline crazy. She had an evident dislike of rambunctious boys, so I typically took a few of them off her hands during my hour and a half visits. There was an empty classroom around the corner that became my work space. In the greatest irony of things, it was the D.A.R.E. classroom.

A barrage of “Hi Ben”s met me as I entered the classroom. A quick look at the discipline board produced three familiar names: Devon, Cory, and Kris. The first two were circled, signifying two infractions in the last ninety minutes. I have to admit, I was impressed. I was always too quiet of a child to get into disciplinary problems. My younger brother, however, was not.

“Ms. Alexander, can I steal my little brother for a quick minute?” I ask, feigning anger.

“Absolutely. I just don’t know what to do with him,” she responded, genuinely irritated.

Devon dejectedly dragged his feet toward me, and I led him to my office.

“What’s the story today?” I queried.

“Me, Cory, and Kris weren’t sitting in our seats when the bell rang,” he told me.

“That’s all that happened on the first one?” I asked.

“Yeah. Me and Cory ran to our chairs, so we got circles too. She’s so mean, Ben. I hate school,” a deflated Devon said. The buzz from this mornings donuts had worn off.

“Ok. Don’t worry about it. Mom and Dad know Ms. Alexander is a crazy old woman. Just do whatever you can to not lose spirit,” I consoled him. “When you get back in there, you have to make it look like I was ripping you a new one. Otherwise, she might not let me do this again.”

“I can do that,” he said.

I walked him back to his classroom, and like a true professional, Devon held his head down and trudged his way back to his assigned seat.

“Thanks, Ben,” Ms. Alexander said. “Ryan, you can go with Ben. He’ll show you what he is supposed to be working on.”

I was rather pleased to get to spend time with Ryan. A shy young man with a personality not far from mine, he was one of my favorite kids in the class. I already knew him from going to Devon’s football practices.

“Alright, little man, what have we got going on today?” I asked on our way to my office.

“I missed a couple days this week. I have some math and vocabulary to get done,” he dejectedly replied.

“In my experience, it’s always best to get the busy work out of the way. Definitions and sentences, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go ahead and knock that out. Then we’ll worry about math,” I told him as we sat down at the lone table in the room. It only took fifteen minutes of silence for Ryan to get done copying the definitions of his vocabulary words. The original sentences took a little longer, and slightly more input from me. Nothing that would constitute cheating, just a few nudges of encouragement. The math portion of our day took about twenty minutes, which left us with ten to chat.

“Ms. Alexander is so mean. Did Devon tell you why he got in trouble today?” the young man asked.

“Yeah. Not being in his seat for the bell. That’s pretty lame. I haven’t seen your name on the board the last few times I’ve been here. At least someone is safe,” I told him, patting his shoulder.

“Yeah. I’m not as loud as the rest of them. But she’s still mean. I wish I could change classes,” he said.

“Why would you go and do that? Then you wouldn’t have such a cool guy to help you catch up on your school work.”

“I didn’t think about that. That’s the only cool thing about her class,” he informed me, slightly inflating my ego. “That and the hot girls.”

I laughed, remembering the girls I thought were hot when I was his age.

“Who are you talking about?” I inquired.

“Kristina and Ashley. And Kayla,” he choked out between laughs.

At that moment, we looked up to see Devon standing in the doorway. Our time was up.

“Ryan needs to get back to class, Jack Ace,” Devon defiantly declared. He slapped me on the thigh and he and Ryan began running about the room, giggling. I put a good pursuit angle on Devon and swooped him off his feet.

“That’s a rather thinly veiled euphemism, Ironhead,” I firmly told him while holding him in the air.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“It means,” I said as I dropped him to the ground, “that you shouldn’t use those words here. You know I don’t mind a might bit of profanity at home, but you can’t be saying things like that.”

“Yes. Sir,” Devon replied, sarcastically emphasizing the space between the two words. We walked back to the classroom where we turned in Ryan’s homework and exchanged pleasantries. I waved goodbye to the class, and they wished me luck in unison.

The only things on my mind at that point were the doobie waiting in my glove compartment and the Tool album waiting in my CD player.

* * * *

Tension built up from Monday to Friday. Each day was progressively more suffocating than the one before. By game day, everyone was distracted. Nothing got done in classrooms. Energy was conserved for playing and cheering. The initial release came in the form of the pep rally in late afternoon. They tried having them in the mornings, but too many kids started bailing afterward. The important part of the day was done for them. When the state started threatening to pull funding if the truancy problem wasn’t fixed, pep rallies were moved to the late afternoon.

The whole ritual always seemed bizarre to me. The football team decked in our khakis and white shirts waited in the hall while all the other students filled the basketball gym. Parents and community members with nothing better to do on a Friday afternoon also helped to give the gymnasium an overfilled feeling.

When everyone was at a frenzy, the band kicked in our fight song, and the team ran through the human tunnel that formed on the other side of the door. This is probably a common practice in high schools across the country. What made this significant was the demographic makeup of the school in conjunction with the fight song. Cherokee Hills is a predominantly white, working class town. The CHS fight song was “Dixie.” It opened and closed every pep rally, a constant reminder that I lived in a backward thinking black hole. What disgusted me most was that I liked it. It made me feel pride.

This rally went like most of the others. We entered the gym, held our helmets together in center court, then made our way to our position of privilege: folding chairs with a bag of candy arranged underneath the Falcon mural. Most of my comrades kept their eyes fixed on the cheerleaders in the way cheetahs watch a group of gazelle. Not that I blame them. Cherokee Hills tradition dictates that they should be the object of desire for the entire male population. This is where I kept my eyes fixed as well, however, my mind was elsewhere. I was replaying the events of the previous Saturday night. And what a glorious night it was.

The parents were out of town, so that left me home alone with a bottle of cheap tequila. That meant a small gathering of local troublemakers. There were about ten of us with a good male-to-female ratio, so we ended up playing strip poker. We all ended up drunk, and most of us ended up naked. I ended up both and in my room alone with Haley, a chesty sophomore with a taste for tequila and a crush on me. One thing led to another led to a group of my good friends walking in on me at full attention with Haley’s right hand wrapped around the result of my Y-chromosome.

Laughter erupted, and Haley told me her father wasn’t home, but would be calling in a half an hour. I threw on a pair of athletic shorts, and bid the party farewell for a while.

“Look guys, Haley needs to be home by 12:30 to get a phone call from Jim,” I told them.

“Ben, it’s not even midnight,” Toby said.

“And.”

“She’s a ten minute walk.”

“What can I say? I’m a gentleman,” I slurred. Giggles abounded.

On the way to her place, she made sure I maintained a tent in my shorts. Not that that would have been difficult. I knew that once I went in that house I would leave at least a tablespoon lighter. When we parked the car in her driveway, she practically ripped my head off bringing my mouth to hers. As her tongue twisted with mine, the only thing I could think was, Damn she tastes like tequila. This should be easy.

After a few minutes, we finally made our way inside the small two bedroom house. She went to brush her teeth at my request, put on Mechanical Animals, and found me on the couch. Now she tasted like peppermint and tequila. The next thing I knew, she pulled me onto the floor and got rid of my athletic shorts. And for the first time in my seventeen years I looked toward me feet and found a head in the way. I was well upon my way to forgetting our original purpose when I caught a glimpse of the VCR. It read 12:32.

Just as this stark realization struck me, the phone on the kitchen wall started to ring. Haley’s face suddenly came into view.

“Oh, shit. Hold on,” she said, replacing her hand with mine. She ran to the phone.

“Hi, Daddy! I’m home. Everything’s fine,” she slurred. “Yeah. You what? OK.” She started walking toward me, holding out the phone. “He wants to talk to you.”

My brain collapsed on itself, and I took the phone out of her hand.

“Hello,” I squeaked out.

“She’s drunk. I know she’s drunk. What the hell, Ben?” Came from the other end. Haley decided to calm my nerves by returning to her previous activity.

“Well, Jim. You know your daughter. She’s safe. She’s home,” I said, thinking ‘she’s sucking my cock’ would register as unacceptable.

“Well, motherfucker, this happens again it’s your ass,” he said. “You better be gone by the time I get home.” Click.

“Ben.”

“Ben.”

I felt an elbow hit me in the ribs.

“Ben, you’re giving the speech with Fluffy today. It’s time,” Justin Dixon told me, snapping me back to reality. I gathered my thoughts and remembered the task that had been assigned to me. I got up, and side-stepped my way to the sideline, making my way to the microphone held by our art teacher Mrs. Patrick. My heart rate increased with every step toward center stage, and the lump in my throat got big enough to choke a donkey.

Eddie Fuller, or Fluffy as he was known to us, was a typical prodigal son of Cherokee Hills. He made B’s and C’s in class, spent most of his day in the Ag Barn, and attended one of the two premier Baptist churches in town. Fluffy would speak first, considering his oratory skills were about as good as my levitating skills. But the man was the quarterback, so as long as he played well on Friday night, no one gave a second thought to the speech he gave Friday afternoon. The cute little bugger even had a note card with the three sentences he said.

“Uh, hey guys,” he adlibbed as gracefully as a tap-dancing elephant. “Our team is one and oh this season,” he read. “And tomorrow when we wake up, we’ll be two and oh. Because the days of Falcon pride are back!”

And the gymnasium erupted with enthusiastic screaming. My nervousness momentarily left me as I laughed at how simple, yet effective my hapless companion had been. He handed the microphone to me and the crowd quickly silenced. In a town as small as Cherokee Hills, everyone develops a reputation. My reputation was heavily dependent upon the company one was in. I knew the coaching staff was more nervous than I was when my name was called. The fact that everyone was interested in what I had to say filled me with the satisfaction I only usually get after performances.

“I don’t know how many of you read the paper,” I began. I felt everyone tighten in fear of what may come next. “But I took a look at the sports section today.” The relief was all but audible.

“You know, the picks of all the local sports writers. I’m sure you looked at it. We’re picked to win this game by seven of the eight.” I paused for applause, just as I knew I would need to. “But there is still one non-believer. Nick Matthews thinks Washington is going to beat us tonight,” I said to a round of boos.

“This is the same guy that picked us to go two and eight for the season,” I built my anger with each word. I turned to the rest of the team. “I worked harder than that. Did you work harder than that?” I demanded.

“Yeah!” they bleated.

“Are we gonna lay down and only win one more game this season?”

“No!”

“Or are we gonna whip some Husky ass?” I more stated than asked. The crowd roared, as expected. Sure, part of me believed in my message. I was just a touch irritated with the fact this man did not respect the fact this team had worked so hard in the off season. How this team was not the same group of whiny pricks the team from the previous season was. But I really didn’t care how the season turned out. Not as much as I cared how this speech turned out. The success of the moment flowed through me like an orgasm.

All the players slapped me as I walked by. Some on the shoulder, others on the rump. By the time I got back to my chair, it was time to pick up my helmet and head to the center court for the fight song and alma mater. As the crowd converged to a single huddle, I could hear voices from behind me.

“Great speech, Ben.”

“Good job, man.”

“You’ll have hell to pay on Monday.”

And they were all right.