The story below is based a little on my experiences at the college I attended during my own baccalaureate education, a little on my experiences during the universities I attended during my graduate education, and a good bit more on my imagination, which showed me how a few aspects of those experiences could be merged.
It’s told from two perspectives about a series of encounters between a young star quarterback and a college maintenance man. It’s set in the late 1980s or very early 1990s.
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Getting out of my native South Carolina to go to college was exciting; I’d never been outside my small town except one big trip to Disneyworld when I was seven, so going off to school was a big event. My parents had loaded up the ten-year-old family car with everything they thought I’d need and then some.
We arrived in the heat of late summer at a small private college in the North Carolina coastal plain. I’d been offered a football scholarship for five years, but my parents reminded me—after they helped me unload the car and take everything into my dorm room—that they really expected me to finish in four years, as one of my uncles had done, with a degree that would make me employable. Something in business or computers, they said.
To myself, I rolled my eyes, but for them I pasted on a smile and agreed. They drove off, and I was finally alone, living in a new place for the first time in 18 years.
There was no air conditioning, just box fans we’d set up as we brought my stuff into the room, so I stripped off my sweaty shirt. I stood in front of the mirror on the side of the room I’d picked, looking at my body with a critical eye. I really hoped my new coach would appreciate the increased hours in the gym I’d put in after I signed on the dotted line earlier in the spring, before I graduated. My shoulders were broader, my pecs were larger, and my arms rippled with muscles; a true six-pack showed above my waistband.
I tried a few stereotypical muscle-flexing moves, laughing at myself for posing. I liked the muscles, liked not having any hair except a little bit in my armpits and a thin happy trail down the center of my stomach. I liked the light caramel color of my skin and the short Afro that copied my father’s. I looked like a redbone gladiator.
Still watching my moves in the mirror, I palmed an imaginary football with my big left hand and pretended to throw a long pass. Now that’s what I was going to be doing for the Coastal Atlantic College Mustangs! They’d signed me up as their new star quarterback, as the person who was supposed to take them to the next North Carolina state championship.
Hell, I was young and cocky.
“I’m ready, coach,” I told the mirror, liking the sound of my voice in the empty room. “I’ll go out there and kick some ass!”
It’s told from two perspectives about a series of encounters between a young star quarterback and a college maintenance man. It’s set in the late 1980s or very early 1990s.
_____
Getting out of my native South Carolina to go to college was exciting; I’d never been outside my small town except one big trip to Disneyworld when I was seven, so going off to school was a big event. My parents had loaded up the ten-year-old family car with everything they thought I’d need and then some.
We arrived in the heat of late summer at a small private college in the North Carolina coastal plain. I’d been offered a football scholarship for five years, but my parents reminded me—after they helped me unload the car and take everything into my dorm room—that they really expected me to finish in four years, as one of my uncles had done, with a degree that would make me employable. Something in business or computers, they said.
To myself, I rolled my eyes, but for them I pasted on a smile and agreed. They drove off, and I was finally alone, living in a new place for the first time in 18 years.
There was no air conditioning, just box fans we’d set up as we brought my stuff into the room, so I stripped off my sweaty shirt. I stood in front of the mirror on the side of the room I’d picked, looking at my body with a critical eye. I really hoped my new coach would appreciate the increased hours in the gym I’d put in after I signed on the dotted line earlier in the spring, before I graduated. My shoulders were broader, my pecs were larger, and my arms rippled with muscles; a true six-pack showed above my waistband.
I tried a few stereotypical muscle-flexing moves, laughing at myself for posing. I liked the muscles, liked not having any hair except a little bit in my armpits and a thin happy trail down the center of my stomach. I liked the light caramel color of my skin and the short Afro that copied my father’s. I looked like a redbone gladiator.
Still watching my moves in the mirror, I palmed an imaginary football with my big left hand and pretended to throw a long pass. Now that’s what I was going to be doing for the Coastal Atlantic College Mustangs! They’d signed me up as their new star quarterback, as the person who was supposed to take them to the next North Carolina state championship.
Hell, I was young and cocky.
“I’m ready, coach,” I told the mirror, liking the sound of my voice in the empty room. “I’ll go out there and kick some ass!”