Sports Briefs: A Good Friday

My sister and I have both grown up, neither of us live at home, Dad is watching from Heaven, and I don't even think they make football ribbons any more. But if I could relive just one Friday from my childhood, here is what would happen:

7:20 a.m. -- Dad enters my bedroom. Turns on lamp. Wakes me up.

7:21 -- Fall back asleep.

7:23 -- Dad and Mom enter room. Turn on ceiling light. Strike a match to my sheets. Wake me up.

7:32 -- Eat a cinnamon roll the size of my face. The kind that has more glaze on it than every eye in World History class combined. Mom always took me and my sister by the Sweet Shoppe on Thursday afternoons to buy donuts and cinnamon rolls for our Friday breakfasts. Compared to soggy Frankenberry--a typical Monday through Thursday breakfast--orange juice, a cinnamon roll and a Smurf vitamin were considered special.

7:44 -- Brush teeth and forget to use Scope. And not give a flip about forgetting, since I am only in elementary school.

7:55 -- Arrive at school and go by the place where the cheerleaders are selling ribbons. Before every game throughout the season, the cheerleaders would sell ribbons that said something to the effect of, "Trap the Tigers, Olney Cubs" and have a picture of a cartoon tiger getting his tail amputated. The guys would wear their ribbons pinned to their jeans. The girls wore them on their cheerleading vests. And I would carefully place my ribbon in my backpack, making sure not to get it wrinkled, so I could take it home and keep it in a specially designated place with all the rest of my unbent ribbons from previous weeks.

8:00-11:30 -- Sit through math class, history class and English class. Don't learn nothing.

11:35 -- Arrive home for a hot meal, freshly prepared by my mother, June Cleaver.

11:40 -- Back at school. Elementary-aged students were supposed to eat fast.

11:42-12:30 p.m. -- Recess. Tackle football. All the talented boys against all the untalented boys.

12:40 -- With all the boys now smelling and looking like grass soufflé, it was time for our weekly spelling test. I always aced these. After stopping by the bakery on Thursdays, Mom came home and reviewed spelling words with me, which proved beneficial later in life when I invented the spell check on the computer.

1:05-3:00 -- Sit through science class, reading class and writing class. Don't learn nuthing.

3:10 -- Time for the pep rally! Pack 300 screaming, sweating youngerts, junior high harries, high school harrierers and parents into the basketball gymnasium, have the band play the fight song, the cheerleaders dance to a rap song and one or two football players give speeches. Always good fun.

3:40 -- Back home, just in time to reach in the closet and pull out my football for some action in the front yard. I would force my sister to come out and play, and any stray neighborhood children would soon join us. We would all play until the first person began bleeding. I never thought about it at the time, but I'll never know where all the neighborhood children came from. There weren't that many kids our age that lived anywhere near us. But as soon as I went outside with a football, there would be five or six boys on bikes come riding by, almost like they had a surveillance camera in our house

5:00 -- Inside in time for "SportsCenter." I would never miss this show when I was a child. I had to see Chris Berman as "The Swami" make his predictions every Friday. He really could tell the future. Whichever teams he picked to win always wound up losing.

6:20 -- Dad would be home from work around this time, and our family would head to the school cafeteria for the pre-game supper. For some reason I never wanted to eat in the cafeteria when I was at school. But whenever they had these dinners, I always wanted to go. If I saw my parents eating the food, it meant it must be safe.

7:05 -- Back home in time to watch some TV. I remember watching "All in the Family," "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," or a Texas Rangers baseball game during this time. As my sister got older, though, she wanted to watch "Family Matters," on ABC's TGIF lineup. This was around the time I learned that, as the older brother, it was my responsibility to take the initiative and allow my little sister to watch the program she wanted to, just as long as it was on a small TV in one of the bedrooms.

7:29 -- Time to go the football game! The same game that starts at 7:30. Meaning another week of not seeing the players run through the sign, hearing the national anthem or even knowing who our opponent was.

7:35 -- Get to our seats in time to see the Cubs run three straight plays up the middle for a total of five yards. And they say high school coaches don't have imaginative play-calling.

8:15 -- Wave, make eyes at one of the cheerleaders and signal with hands that I'd like for one of them to throw me a plastic football.

8:16 -- Have plastic football bounce off hands and into the lap of the school bully.

8:38 -- Halftime. Time for the marching band! Fifty, or so, students dressed up in ridiculous uniforms, kicking their legs--in a matter that makes you think an insect has taken residence in an uncomfortable part of their bodies--producing music that resembles a teenager's voice, that draw wild applause from the audience. It was usually the highlight of the night.

8:49 -- Ask for money from Dad. Head to concession stand. See huge line. Don't care, because I'm out on my own with Dad's money. Hence, I'm cool. Stand in line for 10 minutes, waiting to order nachos with no jalapenos and a Dr Pepper. Return to seat. Hand Dad his change. Bite into first, cheese-covered nacho. Very soggy. Log onto Web site called www.imabouttogag.com. Throw rest away.

9:15 -- The game is usually out of reach by now, with the Cubs far behind. This is when I reach over and tug on Dad's sweater, asking if we can go home now. Dad pretends not to hear me. Mom is with me 100 percent, but doesn't say anything.

9:29 -- With the Cubs trailing 45-6, Dad agrees to go home.

9:35 -- Arrive home. Mom puts on pop corn and hot chocolate . . . with marshmallows . . . in a Casper the Friendly Ghost mug. A Friday night, after-football-game tradition

9:40 -- Sitting on the couch with a bowl of pop corn and my hot chocolate, it's back to the TV. I turn on CBS just in time for "Northern Exposure" so I can catch a nice glimpse of a snowy scene, before turning it over to AMC to watch "The Raven," an old black-and-white movie with Bela Lugosi, or another creepy picture that might make me wet myself.

11:15 -- Dad and I watch some of the local high school football highlights. There is usually just a score for the Cubs. They've lost, something like 63-14. Dad is upset that we missed them score a touchdown. Holds out hope that, between his two other favorite teams--the Texas Longhorns and Dallas Cowboys--one of them can pull out a victory over the weekend.

11:30 -- To my room with my ribbon to fish out my "special designated place"-- a book cover kept under my bed with all the other ribbons taped to it. I tape the new ribbon to it and write the score above. Notice that the Cubs are making improvements with their margins of defeat.

11:45 -- To bed, knowing that tomorrow is the only day of the week I can sleep late. And I'll probably wake up early for cartoons instead.