Aug-1984- 1987– My first three years in high school were NOT typical. I played football in the fall. Specifically did not play Basketball in the winter so I could work out every day. Threw the shot put and the discussion in the spring (track and field) and then would work out like a mad man in the summer to get ready for football in the fall again. I excelled in all the sports in which I participated in.
As a Freshman, I was one of the best running back in the county. We were division champions, and the head varsity football coach (Coach Hyman) asked me to practice with the Varsity squad for the Thanksgiving day game. The quarterback and captain of the football team (Peter Bebei) when he got word of this cornered me in the hall with about six other football players and he told me that if I showed up to practice for his final game that he and all the other guys were going to beat the shit out of me in the parking lot. He did not want me “stealing his thunder” for his final game.
I didn’t go out for the Thanksgiving game and this really annoyed Coach Hyman since he believed that I had turned him down. Track season comes in the spring and I go out for the track team. I go out for shot put and the discuss, as well as the 100-yard dash and the high jump. Coach Hyman coaches the “weight” throwers and won’t allow me to throw with the varsity even though I am the third-best thrower on the team. I confront him about this and finally, he lets me throw. In the 100 the fastest kid (I forget his name) tells me after the first day of track practice that if I beat him again that he is going to kick my ass. So I don’t try my best. Why does everyone hate me? I keep asking myself. I earn a varsity letter in track anyway.
In the fall of Sophomore year Coach, Hyman is having real problems with his marriage and being an utter ASS Hole to everyone (teachers, students, and athletes ). One of my talents, if you will, is that I can judge a person’s character within minutes of meeting them. By their body language, gestures, personality, etc. I can size up the person’s worst fear, what they are feeling, what they want all in a matter of moments. It’s like reading a person’s soul as easily as you are reading these words.
I just seem to have a “knack” for it. Anyway, I walk into Coach Hyman’s office during one of the breaks and say to him “don’t worry Coach, everything will work out with you and your wife.” Trying to be helpful. He freaks out and starts yelling “get out of here you F*CKING piece of shit and don’t come back because YOU WILL NEVER PLAY HERE AS LONG AS I AM THE COACH.
“The next day he brings me into the dean’s office and tells me to “quit” because I will never play at Ramsey High school. I never quit but for the next two years every day at practice he would scream at me to “get off his field” and I wouldn’t. Not for any great love for him or the game by any means. It simply stayed and get yelled at or go home to my hysterically crying mother. So I stayed and took his abuse but he felt so violated that I knew what was going on in his life he didn’t want me anywhere near him, and of course, I was right next to him for everything because I wouldn’t quit. This made him extremely hostile towards me.
This continued all through high school. The thing is, every now and then, whether it was going into the locker room at halftime or after the game getting back on the bus, or at the track meets I REMEMBER seeing the same two military men (Mr. Green and Mr. Blue). I would play in 10 football games per year and throw in approximately 20 twenty track meets a year. Thinking back I only saw these men 2 or 3 times a year. To be honest I only remember seeing these men twice at football games during my four years in high school.
Both times I was walking off the field after the game and I started looking for my parents and I looked into the crowd, and they were, just standing there in the middle of a sea of moving people looking right at me. And I said the same thing “that’s odd, what the Hell are those two guys doing here.”And again I would just dismiss it. I would mainly see them at the track meets. Let me explain, in High school track there are two types of meets. The track team schedule consisted of 10-12 “Bi or Tri” meets, when our school competes against another school, or two other schools, in which case it is a tri-meet. These are small meets and I NEVER saw these men during one of them.
The other types of meets are the county meets, relay meets, and state meets. These meets consist of 20 to 30 TEAMS being there. As such these are huge events. I would say between 5,000 and 10,000 people would be there (I mean some of these things were HUGE events). Anyway, how did I pick out these two men among 10,000 people? The way these meets work is everyone sort of goes to their own area. The pole vaulters go to the pole volt area, the high jumpers go to the high jump pit, and each area has its own crowd which then forms around each area (all the coaches of those athletes, the parents, etc. etc.). So, the shot put circle usually is over and off to the side somewhere, basically clear of everything else. As we began to throw, all the competing athletes, the coaches, and the parents would all sort of gather in the same area to watch the event.
At least once a year at one of these big meets my eye would just catch the odd site of these two men in uniform at these meets. I honestly convinced myself that at least one of them had to have a son that was competing or something. It wasn’t unusual to see men in uniforms at the track meets because other kids were going to go to school at the military academies and as the meets transpired I occasionally saw other men in uniforms walking around and talking to people. For example, the shot putter from Lodi was going to go to West Point, and I saw another man in a green uniform over talking to him. What made this all so weird was the two men I’m talking about were looking at me and I didn’t know why. I didn’t put it all together until years later.