Days of Glory

Sure, I look like the rough and tough REMF I was as a signalman in the Army National Guard. Now, of course. Tossing grenades, humping an M-16 across Missouri, setting up antennas. I'm bad.

But back in the day, I was a skinny little kid who dreaded grade school gym. Brains counted for nought in that environment. But I did have glimmers of success. Lileks got the ball rolling with his confession of gym debacles from long ago.

I wrote of my moment of glory in dodge ball in his comments (with only a slight edit).

I was skinny and horrible at gym throughout school. But I loved dodge ball in grade school–what you call battleball.


Not that I could really hit anyone without them catching the ball. I had no accuracy, and when accurate I had too little power.


But I was at least fast. I specialized in retrieving balls in the “sure death” position near the line where the other side would ambush our team trying to get ammo. I’d get the ball, elude the shots, and hand off the ball to our real guns who’d volley fire at the other side. I could dodge, at least, with the best of them.


But I did have one real moment of triumph in a game. One day, when the other side was getting their volley ready, one of their big guns had me in his sights. And at that moment, I said to myself, “Here I stand my ground. I do not dodge today.”


He heaved the ball and it sped true toward my chest, through scattering classmates who cleared a path. I braced myself for impact, and quite literally blacked out when I was hit. I was awaken by cheering team mates clustered around me, lying flat on my back on the cement. I had been knocked silly by the impact–but with the ball still clutched to my chest. My attacker was out.


It was a moment of glory in an otherwise meek gym class existence.

I thought about it a bit more, and realized I had more than that one moment.

Another moment was with the same kid. Another game we played--but on the playground at lunch and not in gym--was a version of tag. One person was "it" and stood in the middle of a field. Everyone else stood at one edge touching the fence--which was safe. The fence on the other side was also safe. So the idea was that the mob ran across the field to the other safe zone. The person who was "it" tried to tag those runners. If tagged, you joined the "its." Eventually, the ratio of free runners to "its" flipped and you might have a horde of people ready to pounce on the last remaining free runner.

So another moment of glory actually happened for me in this game, and it was against the same boy in the dodge ball game.

I was one of the "its" and the other kid was a runner. He got around me, and I gave chase. I didn't catch him, but he remained only just out of my reach as we sprinted across the field. I could actually hear several kids exclaim in some disbelief, "Wow, Brian's almost as fast as [Mark]!" Let me tell you, that felt good.

I also had an extended period of glory in high school gym, although that was based almost purely on accident of birth. In fencing class, we learned all the moves and in our mini tournament, I went undefeated.

You see, I'm left handed. All through training, I dueled right handers. So I learned to fight right handers. The experience of all the right handers was almost totally fighting right handers. So when they faced me, they didn't quite know what to do. I beat them all. My toughest victory was actually over a fellow south paw. I still love the fencing scene early in The Princess Bride when each fights wrong-handed to lull the opponent.

I had another day of glory, actually, that put a lot of the whole jock mystique into amazing perspective for me. It was on a family trip for a family picnic/reunion. It might have been a Fourth of July thing.

I was one of many kids there, and we struck up an impromptu made up game with a ball on concrete. It required hand-eye coordination and I was great at it. The local kids and other visitors--none of whom I knew--were awe struck. I was soon the object of desire for teams who wanted me on their side. This was heady stuff for a gym evader.

It got better. Really.

There were girls there, too, of course. And while we boys were playing the game where I strode like a demi-god through lesser mortals, an "older" girl (who may have been a couple years older than me) called me out for checking her out from across the yard. I can't even remember if she was cute--or, God forbid, related to me. And I don't recall checking her out. My eyes may have been pointed generally toward her, but I was focused on enjoying my fling with athletic greatness in my peer group.

But because of that outcry by an older, presumably more sophisticated girl, not only was I the star athlete--I was the stud on the make. Life was good. For an entire afternoon. It was an out-of-body experience I never forgot. A glimpse of what the apha males of grade school gym lived every day.

I managed to avoid calls for more traditional games (like softball) which would have exposed me for the skinny non-athletic kid I was, for the rest of the picnic. It was an interesting lesson in reputation and how fleeting and nebulous it can be. And when I enlisted in the Army Guard, I excelled in the physical training of basic training and ran with the pack--never dropping out and never faltering, no matter how tired I was and no matter that I spent the last part of training with an injury that locked up my thigh muscles after every run. It was so bad they x-rayed me for a stress fracture. Pain maskers are wonderful things. And no matter that I was rather older than your standard recruit (me being the advanced age of almost 27).

So while I always have memories of the horrors of gym, I never stood in awe of the athletes who did it all so easily in gym class (fear, yes--they were big and mean and I was skinny, after all. The laws of physics did not change). I had days of glory, too. "Days," quite literally, of course--like perhaps five--but glory nonetheless. And in the end, when it mattered in uniform, I did it all and did it well, to become a killing machine who to this day can't cross an international border without inspiring a code red alert.

I'm a bad ass. Or at least I can be. Don't you forget it.