The Boston Marathon

Almost everyday when Steve comes to work he's walking gingerly. Sometimes he
comes in and you can see he's in some serious pain. I know how he feels so I laugh
and ask him "Well, are gonna skip running today?". Nah. He goes out there everyday,
rain or shine, hot or cold, pain or no pain. Runs 5, 10 , 15 miles, whatever is in the plan.
And now after about 15 or so marathons it finally paid off. Yesterday he ran a time of 3 hours,
19 minutes, and 3 seconds. Good enough to qualify for "The Boston Marathon", which is
supposed to be some big dot deal up north somewhere. Anyway drop him a line and congratulate
him.

The Sikeston Agreement!

Years ago in a state named Missouri four Rugby players were traveling
by car to Cape Girardeau to play a match. One of the said players had partaken
in the pre-game ritual meal of Taco Bell to go! (or some other gas inducing meal)
Anywho, the smell was so noxious and heinous that the other passengers dam
near choked every time the offending gas was released. Something had to be done!
As they were passing though Sikeston, MO an agreement was suggested and all
the passengers agreed that from this day forward anytime someone cut a fart in
a car he simply had to say Sikeston alerting all other passengers to immediately
and as fast as humanly possible roll down their window. For years after that whether
going to a game or anywhere really, the Sikeston agreement saved a great deal
of nausea. I recently had to introduce the Sikeston agreement to a new team.
See, my 6 year old daughter hadn't been "potty" in a few days and driving to my parents
house for Thanksgiving she was basically choking up the rest of us. At that point
I explained the agreement to my family as a joke. Well they took it to heart and
now the Sikeston agreement has been re-introduced to a new generation. Only problem is
now they can't wait to cut one so they can yell it out!

Give Blood! Play Rugby!

I played this sport for two years without knowing what to hell
was going on. When I finally learned all the rules and nuances of
the game I was too beat up to play anymore. Most of my memories are
not of on the field heroics, but of after the game heroics. I have
probably forgotten a lot and help me out if I get anything wrong, but
without a doubt I saw and heard about some of the most interesting
things ever in my life in my Rugby days. Nothing else has even come close!
I will keep these things down to one or two sentences but feel free to comment
with as long winded version of the story as you like.

I ONCE SAW(or heard about):

Marc Holley blow snot out of his nose. Not the nostrils but the
bridge after it got split wide open.

Lance's girlfriend chase him with a high heel during a Rugby x-mas
party.

NO less that 50 people drink beer out of a Rugby cleat(Used).

Now I heard this from Paul Denu but have no reason to doubt it.
At the Mardi gras Tourney party what started as a beer slide
turned ugly. Other added substances that people slid through
in the way he told it were piss, vomit, and feces. And I heard him
tell it on the sideline to two women he just met the night before.

Does any of this ring a bell?

Pony Keg
A terrible smell coming from (player to remain nameless)'s room!
Stick Races
Rugby Queen(Steve Perry's was the best)
Kissing a Prop
Peg Leg
Party Barge
Knoxville Trip(Dave warned me to get legal advice
before re-counting this trip).
How Wild tourney girls dancing on the bar.
Boat Races

The All Ghouls Rugby tourney at SIU. Saw a lot
of devil worhsipping freaks, guys head butting a stop
sign until there head bled. Shots in a barber chair.

The first time my mom came to a Rugby game, the first thing
she saw were two guys buck naked, sliding through the mud when
they play the Old # 7 tourney out in Bartlett that year.

What is your fondest memory? I guess mine is being able to travel
with 15 or 20 guys to some tourney with less that 50 bucks in your
pocket, stay drunk for two days and get laid if you are lucky.
The on the field action was pretty fun too! Click on the comments
and leave your favorite!

Let's get ready to Rumble Part 2

A fight is a fight right. Wrong! I have been in some fights
which if you were to see them and know the circumstances you
could not help but laugh your ass off. There always seems to
be one common denominator in most fights and that is inebriation.
Let's just start with one of the funniest things I've seen. It's
never funny at the time but after the wounds and feelings heal...
Four of us were in Birmingham, AL, with tickets to the NASCAR
race in Talledega the next day. It was me, Paul, Lance and
the only white boy I have ever known with the name Jerome.
Anyway we checked in the hotel and instead of sitting there
and watching TV we went to (brace yourself) a bar. Hard to
believe I know, but we did. Anyway once we were in the place, one
of those disco/meat market type deals, we got separated in
pursuit of...... Anyway, we hadn't seen Paul for
awhile and it was getting close to last call. The rest of us
heard about somebody in a fight with the bouncers and guess who
the bounced was...yep. So we went out to the car, a Bronco
II with a manual transmission, and there was Paul. I don't know
where else he was hurting, but I know his eyes were because he
looked like a big drunk raccoon. Well right off the bat Lance
was raggin Paul about gettin his ass kicked. I don't know why
Paul was driving us home but he was, Lance was in front
and me and Jerome were in the back. Anyway, he had enough of
Lance calling him a pussy and he hauled off and tagged him
right in the face. Lance hit back and it was on, an all out
brawl right there in the front seat. The only problem was we
were at a stop light......on a hill.....right behind a brand
new Mercedes. Next thing you know gravity took over and we started
rolling. Meanwhile being the concerned driver that he was, Paul
kept on swinging and the car kept rolling. We hit the Mercedes and
me and Jerome were pretty much trapped in the back because it was
a two door not a four door. The owner of the Mercedes pops out and
I could see she was mad as hell. Jerome was trying to stop the fight
but I was watching her. She came up to the window and started banging.
Paul and Lance were not phased, they just kept at it. She stomped and
shook her head then just walked back to her car, got in and took off.
We finally got Paul to pull out of the intersection and let Jerome
drive. Yes, we dodged a bullet(jail). Once we got back to the hotel
the conflict continued until all the mattresses were on the floor
and everybody was tuckered out. The race was just a blur....I can't even
remember who won or if we even stayed for the finish. But I won't ever
forget the night before.

Let's get ready to Rumble! Part 1

Times are indeed different today. If you let a kid out of your sight today,
and something bad happens, you are at risk of public flogging and possible jail time.
Not so when I was growing up. All the parents risked was heartbreak in extreme cases and
having to use the belt for anything else.
My freedom growing up led to many adventures my parents never even knew about. I'll get to that later. But by the time I was my son's age(8) I had been in at least 10 fights with people besides my sister. He hasn't been in any. Not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just saying it's not common anymore.

The following story happened when I was around 6 or 7.
I used to hang around with older kids in my neighborhood and I got beat up a lot. I went home and told my dad the first time it happened, expecting him to go put a stop to this somehow. Instead he said simply "Don't hang around them anymore". Well the next day I was right back out there with them. There were other kids in my neighborhood my age, they must have been smarter, they stayed away. Anyway, besides the short little grab-ass type of things, the first real fight I can remember was a doozy. I guess the older kids were bored so they more or less pit me and this other kid against each other and basically made us fight each other. We each had about two or three of the older kids in our corner, coaching us to inflict pain. It was not a fight with x number of scheduled rounds or anything, but they would let us fight for a few minutes (or longer) then stop us for instruction. I was better at fighting once I got the action on the ground. We fought standing up boxing style for a few rounds. I used to get nosebleeds all the time back then, and of course it wasn't long before my white sweatshirt was covered in blood. I wasn't hurt at all and actually I was getting mad because the crowd seemed to think I was losing because of the blood. well my anger caused me to kick things up a notch, much to the delight of the older delinquents in my corner. Well things changed for the worse and I don't mean
for me. I got him down in a headlock and was in a good position to hit his face, which I did...repeatedly. Then I somehow ended up on his back, he was on his knees with his hands holding his head. My guys were jumping and cheering and telling me to keep pounding, so that's what I did. One blow after another right in the middle of his back. Some of the neighbors were now coming out and the fight was actually in the front yard of the boy I was fighting. He was struggling to breath now, and somebody yelled out that his mom was on the phone. "Oh shit" popped into my head. I hopped on my bike and coasted down the hill and around the corner to my house. I felt pretty good, not tired at all for having been in a fight that lasted at least an hour. My dad was in the carport. He saw my shirt and did a double take so I said "I got in a fight and I won!" And him being a man of few words said "Good". I had a whole new respect from
those older kids after that. I didn't see the kid I whipped for a while. One day he rode up on a motorcycle and asked if i wanted a ride. I got on and he took me about two miles away from my house and we stopped and got off. He got back on in a hurry and took off leaving me to walk back home. I guess that was his way of getting even. Anyway we moved not long after so that was the end of it. But for me I continued to get in fights whenever the situation dictated. I've been in fights over things both big and small. I been in fights with strangers and fights with friends. I don't fight anymore (too old) and I guess it's different now with all the guns around. But for me fighting was just as much of my childhood (and early adulthood) as
playing a pick-up game of football. Sadly, I don't see kids doing that anymore either.
Well, more details on some of the other skirmishes later,but now I gotta get back to work.

Life of Pain

Almost from the very outset of my days I have been very hard on my body. Injuries are a part of life but I have had more than most, less than some(Evel Knievel has me beat). I would like to
say I don't know why but that's not true. I have a high tolerance for pain, which is a product of my early football years where you played hurt as a rule rather than the exception. I am also very clumsy and I love to take risks. Combine that with a childhood of very little supervision(a subject I will touch on later) and a group of friends who thought of and recruited you to participate in various lane brain activities and that is a recipe for a lifetime of injuries. Though some are more severe than others, they all count. You have heard about six degrees of separation well my body is like six inches of separation. You could get a six inch ruler and start at my feet and go from spot to spot where I have had an injury and go all the way to my head. Well that's not really true but close enough and it sounds good. This list will surely be added to as my brain only works intermittently nowadays, but here it is........

Let's start with stitches and where I have had them.

Back of the head-fell back into the corner of a table. 2nd grade.

Front of the head-Jump out of a swing when I was two. My mom said I yelled Superman right before my forehead hit a piece of concrete.

Eye lid and eye-brow-In a car wreck I got hit from the side and my head busted the passenger side window out.

Cheek-running and slipped on ice, my cheek hit a small knee high light fixture in the Marriott parking lot.

Fingers-A: finger got caught in a bicycle chain against the sprocket.
B: finger got sliced by a buddy showing me how sharp his knife was.

Hand-Slipped while wrestling in the VI parking lot and caught myself before hitting the ground.
Palm landed right on a broken beer bottle.

Other injuries:

Nail stuck deep in my foot. Jumping on a mattress in the woods is when it got lodged in there. I then proceeded to walk about a mile to my house and my mom had pull it out with two hands and her feet flat against my feet.

Broken hand and foot-motorcycle accident when I was 13.

Broken Neck. You heard right. I dove into the shallow end of a pool. Very Painful. The doctor said it was my 7th vertabrae and had the fracture extended any further I would have either been in a wheel chair or worse.

Dis-located shoulder. A guy landed on me when my body was perpendicular the ground during a Rugby game. Shoulder popped right out. They kept on playing and I had to push it back in myself and help myself off the field.

Torn ACL-Football injury. Happened more than once.

Severe Sun burn: Don't know if this qualifies but this has also happened more than once. One time my whole face was covered with blisters the size of quarters.

Black-eyes. Many but two that I remember are when I tried a Ninja move on Paul one night and he instinctively tagged me in the eye. Another time I closed my own eye by attempting to tackle in a Rugby game using my helmet like I used to do in football. Only problem is you don't wear a helmet to play Rugby. This brings me to my next injury.

Concussions-I have had several from various sources. Car wreck. Rugby game. Bicycle wreck.
I am sure there are more for some reason I can't remember them.

Back-This happened initially at Fedex. I hurt it bad about once or twice a year trying to be the strong guy. I live with back pain every waking minute. If you don't have back pain you're lucky.

Those are the major ones for now....on the minor side I have had about 55,000 bruises, cuts and scrapes. One day I will probably wake up and won't be able to move. I'm getting old now and don't do the things that cause injury much anymore, but at least the pain let's know you are still alive.

My first post

We were in New Orleans on New's Years Eve one year(can't remember) and I was
with about half of our Rugby team drinking heavily on Bourbon Street. I was dared to
and did walk up behind this girl and lift up her skirt from behind. It wasn't completely
innocent but it didn't warrant her to begin to beat the shit out of me with her umbrella.
My buddies were laughing their ass off over on the curb. I bent over foward and she hit
me three or four times until her umbrella broke. At that point, I stood up and with a smile
on my face and threw, with force, my full 32 ounce beer, which I had just purchased and didnt spill
a drop of during the beating, directly into her face with the bulk of it soaking her heavily sprayed
hair and melting her eyeliner. My buddies were now either jumping up and down laughing or
rolling on the beer soaked side walk laughing. I can't remember who was doing what.
Anyway, umbrella girl was on her way back to her frat boy friends. Not sure what she said
but I saw those guys look over at us and shake their head decidedly "No". As in no we are
not gonna tangle with those guys, you will just have to be pissed. My friends bought me another
beer and we began the countdown to the new year. Umbrella girl was on here way for more hairspray and make-up. Ahh memories.