Kick Me (24 page)

I got to the top and opened the door. I was immediately shocked. The booth was nothing like the one in
The Odd Couple.
It was nothing like where the announcers sat during
Monday Night Football.
It wasn’t even as nice as the shed in our backyard. It was basically a big wooden box that looked like it had been assembled by the Little Rascals. There were no lights in it, it was made entirely out of plywood and particleboard, and it had no glass windows. The counter where the mike stood was basically a couple of two-by-fours that had been nailed together and then hastily pounded into the wall. A bunch of men in their late forties and early fifties were standing around, wrapped in heavy coats and wearing aviator glasses. They all seemed to have mustaches. When they saw me, they gave me a look.

“Where the hell have you been? You’re the announcer, right?” said the biggest mustache man. These guys all looked like the deer hunters who always came into my dad’s store to buy bright orange clothes that were supposed to prevent them from drunkenly shooting each other out in the forest.

“Uh, yeah, Mr. Randell told me to get here at seven. I thought I was early.”

“No, kid, the game
starts
at seven. Christ, I thought one of us was gonna have to announce it.” He shook his head as if my misinterpretation of the time had reaffirmed everything he’s ever believed about how the new generation was going to drag the country into anarchy through its stupidity and laziness. “Well, get over here so we can tell you what you’ve gotta do.”

The guy motioned for me to sit on a metal folding chair behind the microphone. The “window” in front of the mike was simply a large, long rectangle that had been cut out of the front of the booth. The wind was blowing in and it was freezing. I realized that my lack of a warm jacket was now going to result in a very uncomfortable evening. I sat down on the ancient metal folding chair and felt a shock of cold penetrate the back of my jeans and immediately freeze my ass. The mustache guys all surrounded me, leaning in over my shoulders and exhaling clouds of breath that bore the distinct scent of Dewar’s and Old Milwaukee.

“Okay, here’s the team’s roster. Jake will be calling out the numbers of the players who make the plays. When he does, you look on the sheet, find the names if you don’t know them already, and then make the announcement. You announce the tackler first and then you announce whoever assisted in the tackle. Got it?”

My head was immediately swimming. The tone of voice the guy was using was not the reassuring voice of my mother or my teachers or anyone who was planning on patiently guiding me through an unfamiliar experience. These were a bunch of older guys the likes of which I had seen on construction sites and in VFW halls, the types of guys who I imagined had beaten up hippies in the sixties, guys who supported the Vietnam War and thought the only reason we lost it was because we didn’t drop the bomb on the VC. In short, the kind of guys who would have no patience for a teenage male who didn’t know anything about the sport of football. I felt a hot flash of impending failure shoot up the back of my neck.

“Do you
got
it?” he repeated impatiently. I could feel him trying to prevent himself from calling me “you little sissy boy.”

Completely intimidated, I nodded yes, not having a clue how anybody could ever figure out who tackled who, let alone be able to decipher information as obtuse as who “assisted” in the tackle. But I tried to keep a positive attitude.

“And then I do all the play-by-play, too, right?” I asked.

They looked at me as if I had just announced I wanted to blow them all.

“Play-by-play? Who do you think you are? Howard goddamn Cosell?” This, of course, got a big laugh out of them all, and I immediately had the feeling these guys were quite capable of reenacting Ned Beatty’s “squeal like a pig” scene from
Deliverance.
“You don’t do play-by-play over the loudspeaker at a game. Jesus Christ, you’d drive everybody crazy.”

The evening was getting worse by the second. I had been in the booth for less than two minutes and already I knew that I never wanted to do this again. The unpleasant, oppressive sound of the marching band drifted up through the open window in front of me, carried along on an icy wind that made my chest tense up. I felt the beginnings of uncontrollable shivering starting to take root in my torso, and I knew that speaking was going to become harder and harder.

“Man, I should’ve brought my coat. It’s cold in here,” I said, somehow hoping my discomfort would be a legitimate cause for dismissal.

“Christ Almighty, you didn’t bring a
coat
?” said the main mustache guy. “Where the hell did you think you were gonna be? In some goddamn hotel suite?”

Sort of, I thought. I definitely didn’t envision that I’d be in a killin’ shack that some sadist had dropped on top of the bleachers.

The guys all exchanged incredulous looks, and it was quite clear that we were not going to be best friends by the end of the evening. And because of that, I didn’t expect the magnanimous gesture that happened next.

“Pete, give the kid your coat.”

As cold as I was, the one thing I knew, with all certainty, was that I didn’t want Pete’s coat. I didn’t want to place anything on my body that belonged to any of these guys, let alone something they were wearing at that very moment. I felt panic rise up in me. It was the same feeling I’d had the time I went camping with a friend’s family and forgot my toothbrush and his mother said, “Well, why don’t you just use Dave’s toothbrush? He doesn’t have any germs.” I was able to beg my way out of having to use Dave’s toothbrush by producing a pack of Dentine chewing gum. However, tonight, Pete’s coat was unfortunately inescapable.

“Oh, no, that’s okay. I’m not that cold,” I said, trying to sound suddenly warm.

“Oh, fer Christ sake, put it on. If you start shivering, you’re no good to anyone up here.”

And with that, Pete, the biggest guy who had the dirtiest hair and the greasiest pants I’d seen this side of a pit-crew member at a stock-car race, peeled off his plaid hunting jacket and handed it to me. There’s a smell you encounter on the occasions when you get into a chain smoker’s car on a rainy, humid day and see that his dog, who has just spent the last couple of hours running through a stagnant swamp, is in the backseat. Well, that was the smell I
wish
I was partaking in when Pete’s coat came near my nose. In order to have a stinkier coat, Pete would had to have died and been buried in it. I felt faint but knew I didn’t really have a leg to stand on when it came to convincing these guys I was just joking about being cold. And so, like a man being handed the gun after the fifth click in a game of Russian roulette, I resignedly took Pete’s jacket and put it on.

Before I could fully immerse myself in the wave of nausea that was beginning to overtake me, I saw the cheerleaders head out onto the field with an eight-foot-wide hoop that had been covered with paper. On the paper was painted “Go Big Reds” in big, poorly spaced letters. As the cheerleaders brought the hoop out, the crowd started to cheer. Two of the cheerleaders took the hoop into my school’s end zone and held it up parallel to the goalpost. The other cheerleaders ran out around the hoop and started doing their uncontrollable kick-and-leap-into-the-air moves that cheerleaders seemed to do incessantly. The main mustache guy poked me in the shoulder blade and pointed to the list of players.

“All right, it’s time to introduce the team. Once the band does its fanfare, you welcome everyone to the game and then introduce the players. As you say each name, they’ll run out and break through the hoop. Keep the pace up or it’ll take too long.”

More prophetic words were never spoken.

I looked down at the list of players’ names.

It’s here that I need to give you a small factoid about the metro Detroit area. Detroit has one of the largest Polish communities in the country. And a lot of Polish Americans went to my school. And the minute I looked at that list, I realized that every Polish kid in our school was on the football team. Sitting on the counter before me was an endless list of names, none of which were less than ten letters long and all with a definite shortage of vowels. These were names that looked more like “words” a toddler with a bucket of plastic consonants would construct than the proud family monikers of onetime immigrants who fought and struggled to come to our country. Names like Krymnikowski and Pfekotovsky stared out at me like a street map of Warsaw. Before I could even consult with my mustachioed cohorts, the band hit its warbly fanfare and three guys kicked my chair.

“You’re on!”

I nervously clicked on the mike and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to tonight’s football game.” Even though I was talking into a microphone, I couldn’t for the life of me hear myself over the loudspeaker. I heard the crowd cheer. I could only deduce that either they could hear me or a car had just been raffled off. “Is this on?” I asked the guys. Before I could look back at them, I heard someone in the stands yell “Yes,” followed by much derisive laughter. It was then that I realized I didn’t even know the name of the other team. I guess part of me had assumed that someone would have written up this kind of copy for me so that all I’d have to do was read it out loud and be amusing. I put my hand over the mike and turned to the guys. “What’s the name of the other team?”

The men rolled their eyes like teenage girls, making openmouthed faces that said in an unheard Valley Girl voice, “Oh my God, I can’t believe you don’t know that.” The main guy recovered quickly and yelled at me, “The Cougars! The goddamn Warren High Cougars!”

I moved my hand and said into the mike, “Tonight’s game is between the Warren High School Cougars and the Chippewa Valley Big Reds!” The crowd cheered again, and it was at that moment that I realized how easy it was to get a rise out of a football crowd. Momentarily energized, I continued. “And now, let’s meet the players!”

The band hit another fanfare and then the snare player did a drumroll. It was all very exciting except for the fact that I now knew I had to take on that list of names. The cheerleaders tensed their grip on the hoop. I could see the players standing in the back of the end zone, lined up, waiting to hear their names, the first player setting himself to sprint forward and burst through the large paper ring. I looked back at my support team.

“Just read the list. Read it in order,” the main guy said to me, with a don’t-screw-this-up look on his face.

I looked at the first name on the list and dove in. “Mike Krack . . . eye . . . now . . . ski.” And indeed, Mike Krackinowski ran up and burst through the hoop as the crowd cheered.

All except for one angry voice from the stands.

“It’s Krack-
in
-owski!”

I looked out the window. Sitting two rows from the booth was a very angry mother with a large beehive hairdo wearing a Valvoline windbreaker. She was glaring at me. Her look was so intense that I was momentarily stunned. I felt a finger poke me in the ribs.

“Go on! Keep reading!”

I looked back down at the list. “Bob Stan . . . zow . . . line . . . insky.” And out ran Bob.

“It’s Stanzo-lin-
nine
-sky!” Another angry parent, this time right under the booth’s window, was glaring at me. I felt another prickly wave of panic run up the back of my neck. It was the panic of being trapped, of no escape, of knowing that there was nowhere to go but down. These two names had taken me about twenty seconds to get out and the pace of the players running out of the hoop was not at all what the inventors of the Hoop Introduction Industry had in mind when they first came up with it. Just go back to the list, I told myself. Go back to the list.

“Steven Lip . . . ow . . . . . . . . . rank . . . in . . . . . . . . flaanski.” Another player ran through the hoop. Another angry parent yelled at me. Another wave of prickly panic shot up the back of my neck.

It took me five minutes to get through the first half of the list. The crowd became a mixture of angry parents who felt I was destroying the dignity of both their football-playing sons and their families’ heritages and students who found the whole spectacle funnier by the second. The football team was staring up at the announcer’s booth, the coaches were staring up at the announcer’s booth, and the cheerleaders were staring up at the announcer’s booth. Each name I was able to mangle brought a less enthusiastic player through the hoop. Through my mispronunciations, I was single-handedly defeating our football team more effectively than any rival school ever could. The fact that their team’s announcer didn’t really know who any of them were seemed to put the whole idea of their participation in organized sports on trial. Maybe they weren’t as good as they thought they were. Maybe football wasn’t the be-all and end-all of their lives. Whatever they were thinking, they knew that there was at least one guy in the school who couldn’t care less that they could throw or catch a football, that they could run fast and dodge their way through other guys and knock their fellow players down. And that guy was now in charge of the school’s sound system.

Finally, the main mustache guy said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” and grabbed the microphone. He snatched the list of names from me and started reading them off quickly. The crowd cheered at my dismissal and the football team ran en masse through the hoop and onto the field. The opposing team ran out and the referees blew their whistles. The mustache guy slammed the list down in front of me, clicked off the mike and said, “Jesus Christ, where the hell did you learn to read, anyway?”

“Uh . . . “ I said, quite sure it wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear, “at this school.”

The rest of the evening was a blur. They spoon-fed me the names of the tacklers and the assistants, and I said them and froze my ass off and never got used to the horrible smell of Pete’s jacket. When the game was over, no bonding had occurred between me and the Green Berets up in the booth. They gave me a look that said “don’t come back” when the game was finally over, and I hastily made my way down the rickety stairs and sprinted to the safety of my car before the crowds could see me.