John Can't Play Football

Anyone who knows me well knows my knowledge of sports is very limited. That wasn't always the case. When I was little, my mom and dad would take me to U of M games. I used to enjoy making paper airplanes out of the program pages and trying to get them on the field. Unfortunately anytime anything exciting happened, all the adults would stand up, and all I could see were peoples butts. So in actuality, I never really saw any football being played at all. I saw a lot of time outs and huddles, but that was about it. The marching band was pretty cool, and It was nice to hang out with my parents and have some good snacks. On the nice days it was a lot of fun, but on the cold and wet days it was pretty miserable. 

Like most kids though, my dad had given me several footballs over the years. Carol was too young to try to play with, so I tried to teach John. After all, John loved watching football on TV much more than I did. I figured he would be a natural at it. 

So as I tried to explain my limited understanding of the game, I told John that whoever had the ball, that was the person to tackle. If I had the ball he was to tackle me, and if he had the ball, I was supposed to try to tackle him. The end zones were each end of the backyard and that is where you score. The only thing John heard was "tackle the person with the ball".

So we started out playing, and I would have the ball first. I would hike it to myself, and then something totally bizarre would happen, John would turn into a wild animal. He didn't just tackle me, he had to imitate a complete pile on and bury me in the ground. After finally getting him off me, I would get up and my head would be swimming as I tried to regain full consciousness. Each time it would be the same thing until it was 4th down and I would turn the ball over to him. After four downs, I was knocked almost senseless by my normally loving gentle brother. 

As I started to recover, it was his turn to hike the ball, and I was thinking it was payback time. We got down he hiked the ball to himself, and I charged at him like a bull. He pulled back and threw the ball at my head. It bounced off my face, and I was dazed again. Then John proceeded to tackle me again. He held me down pushing my head into the ground. I was yelling at the top of my lungs that I didn't even have the ball. Finally he let me up and I staggered over to the ball and picked it up, and as I was turning back toward him, he charged me again tackling me to the ground. I am sure I lost consciousness this time. 

When my head finally cleared, I realized that the only rules John would understand was once the ball touched me, it was time to tackle and pummel me. Now that I understood the rules as well, we were able to make a game out of it. It was basically touch the ball and run for my life. It must have been funny to watch me running in circles around the backyard while John chased me growling like a monster the whole time. 

John never learned how to play football any other way, but we had fun playing this way, and John loved to wrestle too. He didn't understand rules very well, so I usually end up in a fair amount of pain in any contact sport we played. I loved playing with John, and he was my best friend growing up.