I fumbled the ball three times in my first high school football game. Never mind that I was the quarterback handling the ball on every snap from center, that the game was played in the muck of a torrential downpour from the tail end of tropical storm Elaine, or that I was one of the smallest and youngest guys on the field facing their biggest and meanest middle linebacker. I was aghast, blaming myself for a 6-6 tie in front of the home fans against our perennial whipping boy Bernardsville.
So that night I embarked on a plan to prevent such future horrors. I inflated my brother's old regulation ball to full resistance, retreated to the upstairs bedroom, and tucked it into my right arm. Then I proceeded to pound the ball with my left hand a hundred times from the top and a hundred from the bottom.
"Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack..."
"Everything all right up there?" yelled my sister Karla, a year ahead of me at Bound Brook High School.
"Just practicing" I shouted back, continuing the pounding.
"Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack..."
"What is that?" she asked, her steps up the stairs in time to the hits.
"Don't come up here!" I screamed, pausing to switch the ball to my left arm.
"OK, but don't hurt yourself" she warned, retreating back down the stairs.
"Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack..." I resumed, launching a second set of four hundred punches.
This scene was repeated every night for the next week. I'd pop on J. Geils Band's Bloodshot album, dial it up full blast, and proceed to pound my hands into swollen red lumps.
Then the next game came at Kenilworth High School on a bright September afternoon perfect for football. And my plan worked - no fumbles in six offensive series. Too bad my right arm and hand were so sore that I couldn't hit speedy Mike Fogarty wide-open thirty yards downfield. We lost 3-0 and I was moved to flanker for the next game.
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