Now that I have made enough fun of myself in this humor column during the past two months to embarrass a normal person, I want to share with you an experience of mine that wasn’t just “cool,” it was “super cool.”
And at the end of this column today, I am issuing a challenge for readers of my column — all eight or nine of them at last count — to submit their own story about a super cool thing that they have done or someone that they know has done. I won an arm wrestling contest with the editor and he has agreed to publish the winning entry in a future edition of the Gazette.
At the risk of tarnishing my “dorky” reputation that I have been building up, here are some examples of cool things I have done.
Having been an athlete in my youth, I have several “key” memories of accomplishments. There was the time in Little League I was playing center field and jumped high above the center field fence to rob another player of a home run — that was cool.
Then there was the time I ran back an interception in a high school football game for a 40 yard TD, and I nonchalantly flipped the football to the referee after I crossed the goal line. You get the picture.
If you have ever been an athlete, you have done special things that were “cool.” And they are engraved in your memory, never to be erased.
And you don’t have to have been an athlete to have done something cool. I wrote a story — based on facts — for my wife about being a “Cool Home Ec Teacher.” It appears at the end of this month’s column.
And then there are the super “cool” things you have done. Probably not as many of those. You know, something that left onlookers staring at you with their mouths open. Or something that people talked about long after the fact.
My friend Jerry has one of those. In his very first game as a professional baseball player — in fact, the very first pitch — he hit a home run over the center field fence!
My “super cool” moment was nothing as dramatic as that, but here is the set up. I never went out for the wrestling team in high school. In fact, I wrestled only once in my life and that was in PE class. And it left my classmates in stunned silence.
This story has some background. After my sophomore year of high school, I hurt my knee playing Babe Ruth baseball. It was bad.
Trying to avoid the tag at home plate, I ruptured my right ACL. The normal recovery period after surgery for such an injury is approximately seven to nine months. So I couldn’t play football my junior year of high school.
The doctor wrote me a “sissy” note to excuse me from any PE activities for the fall semester. So while my classmates engaged in PE, I spent the period sitting on a table with an iron boot on my foot. Lifting, lifting — to strengthen my knee. Pure drudgery.
It was November — close to five months after my knee operation — and my PE class was in the second week of the wrestling unit. I sat watching them wrestle from my perch on the table as I lifted that iron boot.
For several days, one of my PE classmates had been pestering me for a match. I told him I couldn’t because of my knee. He kept at it, insinuating that I was “chicken.”
I know what he was thinking. He was a year younger than I was and my size (small). I had been the starting second baseman on the varsity baseball team for two years and the co-captain of the JV football team.
He thought he was going to build up some “cred” by taking me down in a wrestling match. So finally I bit. I told the PE coach, “Hey, let me wrestle this kid to get him off my back.”
To my surprise, the PE teacher said, “OK.”
At the beginning of class, I faced off with the kid. The rest of the 35 classmates were circled around the mat watching. The whistle was blown.
I immediately took my opponent down and got on top of him as he tried to squirm away. And — in less than 15 seconds — I pinned him. I got off the mat to total silence and walked over to my table as the rest of the class stared at me.
I put on my iron boot and started lifting my leg. I don’t recall ever talking to the kid after that, and I never wrestled anyone again in my entire life.
Now to give you an idea of how a story can be made out of any cool moment, here is one I wrote for my wife. She supplied me with the basics, and I used my imagination to fill in the details and make it funnier than I suppose it was.
Super Cool Home Ec Teacher
Teaching home economics to teenagers is an experience fraught with all sorts of danger. There is always the possibility of a food fight and playing with fire or at least hot burners and ovens.
And then there are the perils of students handling sharp implements.
Yet, Sharon McGuire was born to the task of preventing her neophyte chefs from harming one another.
As she recalls, it was a typical autumn morning at Yosemite High School. Her 38 aspiring cooks were getting ready to sauté mushrooms.
She had used her “outside” voice to give them their directions, for truth be told, most of the students could barely communicate with one another because the band was tuning up in the adjacent room.
In the beginning years of Yosemite High School, there were no walls between the home ec facility and the band room. Out of key trumpets and clattering cymbals made home ec teaching more like training soldiers amid the firing of machine guns and the exploding of bombs.
But, the intrepid Sharon McGuire went about her business deaf to all the distractions. Until … it happened.
Two of her burly boy students got into an argument. It was over something minor one of them said to the other, “Hey moron, you are supposed to use the sharp end of the blade to cut the mushrooms!”
The other kid did not appreciate the insult and tossed a half cut mushroom at the instigator. It stuck on his face between his eyes.
And the mushroom thrower laughed, “Look who’s talking! Mushroom face!” He then said something wise and presidential, “You are the one dumb as a rock!”
“Mushroom face” picked up his own knife and the two squared off. Miss McGuire was Sharon on the spot as she saw what was happening.
She got to them just as they were about to lunge at one another with knives. She separated them with a hand on each of their chests and said, “That’s not gonna happen in my class! Put those knives down on the table!”
Just like an Army sergeant picking up the live grenade and tossing it out of harm’s way. The two boys glowered at Miss McGuire, but they put the knives down and Miss McGuire calmly said, “Here, let me show you how to dice these mushrooms.”
As the now Sharon Miller stated it to her husband, “One of the kids still holds a grudge and glowers at me. He became a night stalker.”
When Sharon first told me this story, she said she still sees this kid; he’s a night stalker. I said, “What? This kid stalks you at night?!” She said, “No, he works at Raleys as a night stocker.”
OK. So you get the drift of the challenge.
Sort through those “cool” experiences of yours where you did something remarkable and write it up as a “Super Cool” story.
Maybe it was something you went out of your way in order to help someone. Or taking a risk to do something that someone dared you to do.
Maybe you know someone with a really “cool” story and they wouldn’t mind if you told it. As I did for my wife, you may have to invent some things.
That’s fine, you can write something exactly as it happened as in my wrestling story or make it funny as in my wife’s story.
I am hand picking an “elite” panel of experts to read the stories and pick a winner. Send your stories to my g-mail address.
Bob Miller is a 48 -year resident of the mountain area and a former English teacher, football/baseball coach at Yosemite High School. He keeps his brain sharp as a Q-tip by substitute teaching at the overly ripe age of 78. He enjoys traveling and taking short hikes with his wife and grandkids. And reading such books as “The Cat in the Hat” and Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods.” He thinks what the world could use in these crazy times is a
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