By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
When it came to middle school playground sports, especially our regular touch football games at recess, I was a puny chihuahua with delusions of bulldog or greyhound grandeur.
At the time in my hometown of Ogden, Utah, I stood about four foot something and probably weighed less than your average proverbial 90 pound weakling. I did not get my major growth spurt until about two or three years later, in high school. Compared to most of my classmates, I was mired in a small preadolescent body incapable of producing hair anywhere except on my head.
The biggest thing about me back then was my competitive urge. It was outsized, and had no business dwelling in a chassis that rarely could satisfy its revved-up demands. I always told myself that energy, enthusiasm, and the sheer force of will could compensate for lack of size, speed, and strength in athletic endeavors. My classmates were unimpressed. Routinely, I was the last man standing alone when we picked sides for football teams.
Our St. Joseph’s Grade School of the mid-1970s was an urban asphalt jungle consisting of grassless, paved and painted playing fields, as well as concrete sports courts. It was on those hardened surfaces that I worked relentlessly, day after day, to display the big dog no one else could see.
One day, fate lent me a hand. While playing defense in a touch football game, an errant pass came my way. I caught it, and started my return of the prized interception. The only plausible path was one most of us routinely avoided, the dreaded north sideline. This particular boundary of our asphalt “field” was an extensive patch of what I now think was a weed called “puncturevine.”
The plant’s name hardly could be more appropriate. Its vines produce a “fruit” (seed containers commonly known as goatheads), which is a small pod with sharp spines that readily pierce whatever they happen to touch, clothes, shoe, skin, etc. The weed’s official botanical name, Tribulus Terrestris, means the “tribulation on the earth.”
No such earthly tribulation, however, was going to block me from grasping the playground pick six glory beckoning to me. I ran for the sideline route and was approaching the goal line when the opposing team’s quarterback, the boy who had thrown the interception, landed an assertive two-hand-touch on my lower back, with just a bit of extra push for emphasis. I lost my footing, went airborne, and scored a touchdown by landing on my right side, in bounds, but in a thatch of puncturevine overgrowth.
It seemed like a defining athletic moment of boyhood, one certainly destined to change the perceptions my fellow schoolyard athletes had about my skill set. Nothing ever hurt so good.
The next day at school I still was nursing my wounds, numerous red welts where various stickers that stuck. Yet, I strode confidently onto the asphalt field at lunch recess, ready for another game, and where possible, coyly displaying the puncturevine badges of glory on my right side and arm. Two new team captains were chosen and they drafted their players for the day. I was chosen last, again. Again!
My puncturevine wounds eventually healed. As the array of tiny red marks slowly but steadily disappeared, the discomfort they caused dissipated too. Another form of boyhood misery persisted. The pain of being overlooked is an invisible but deeper wound that takes a long time to heal.
