Or, as dad called me–“Him”
I think in third grade, I got signed up for bowling after school around twice a month for half the year. We got on a bus right as school ended and we were schlepped to the nearest alley, which was 30 minutes away–don’t forget we were close to nothing. Riding the bus was probably the best part, especially when it was freezing outside. The boys gym teacher was in charge (more on him later). When the bus ride was more enjoyable, you know something was funky.
We bowled in stocking feet–kids’ bowling shoes probably weren’t invented. Picture little kids trying to get a ball that was 1/4 of their body size down a lane that looked as long as the Champs D’Elysees. So it became this farcical event where anyone who got any pins knocked down got to celebrate. You spent more time looking at the cool colors of the balls than rolling. And you got to write on the score sheets with all sorts of unreadable graffiti, like ‘Tommy is a goof’ or ‘Jimmy loves [scribble/cross-out]’.
Starting in late summer, it was football (contact, flag football had not been invented) in the rich town (we sure didn’t have enough kids in our borough!). 3rd and 4th were ‘mites’, 5th and 6th were ‘midgets’. Unlike today, the coaches didn’t have to play everyone. So you went to practice, sweated like a pig, and got nothing in return except a chance to dress up in a uniform on game day. There had to be some kind of Greek tragedy underlying the thing. Dad hardly ever came to the games, once he saw the favoritism. And there were around 40+ kids on the team doing this dysfunctional dance year after year. You’d ask the coach when you were going to play and you were told to sit down and cheer for the players. One kid told me his father heard a coach say that he always hoped more kids would give up and quit; the group was so huge and hard to handle. Was there a book called ‘Coaching For Dummies’ yet?
But nobody quit, and fate always bit the coaches in their asses–the team sucked year after year. As in REALLY sucked–21-0 or 30-6 were common. The coaches’ favorites weren’t any better than us bench warmers. Loss after loss, we got told what pathetic creatures we were, then us unlovable butt-sitters got to run laps with the guys who actually played. Now there’s a true-life lesson: to be punished for something that you had no part in. Maybe it bonded us with “team spirit”. Then we’d have a banquet after the season where we’d all run around like wild ponies signing each other’s programs until coaches rose and gave speeches about how great the starters were and gave out 35 cent trophies to the blessed ones who got to play and be humiliated.
And finally, there was Cub Scouts. You had to go to a men’s store called Kroll & Keck (I can’t make this shit up!) for your uniform, then start working on merit badges. I got to wear a cheap ring with a wolf’s head on it; great chick magnet, eh? There were awful holiday skits in a newly built church a block away (note: the minister was an “asshole”). There were little contests where you made balsa boats or cars and raced them. I sliced the hell out of my thumb making the car. But dad wouldn’t help, he was tired of my lack of interest in helping him do things that mattered. So mom got involved, which in turn shamed him, so he wound up helping. And you’d always know which fathers more or less made the car or boat versus the ones the 10 year old did. I always got eliminated in the first round. My father stood apart from other men and kept telling me how the leader of our scouts (who lived a block away) was an asshole and many of the fathers who did all the work for their kids were assholes, too. I think there were levels of asshole-dom, like in Dante’s Inferno. That scout leader was up pretty high, below assholes in his family.