Slow Motion

     This is supposed to be tiny little vignettes of rugby reality. A lens of reality.  Three of my vertabrae  are fused, c6,c5, i forget which way the sequence goes. They used to let us slam into each other in the front row. And I was sitting on the shoulders of a massive individual known as the love beast, among others. Sometimes it takes a minute for me to turn my head and the signals still get to the same place, but they take a detour, that's all.  Doctors bore me. Here is a true account of what happened when I weighed what a fat prop weighs and had  a tiny little stroke-ish thing that I fought off. Paralysis is no fun. A collapsed scrum is no fun.

                              .....something happened to me in a scrum collapse.....

     Rugby became my only reality in the mid-eighties sometime. I am using this post to get things down that are triggered by other memories as a sort of rough draft, so sorry if this is choppy, this isn't close to finished...

    
    In my senior year in high school, I wrestled at 124 and could have gone lower but there were two freshman "legacies" at those weights. A zimmerman and a bieber, both from wrestling families, brothers to sectional champions, purebreds. So it really started to surprise me to be called "big guy" when I started attending Community College of Philadelphia in 1981. I thought they were calling me fat. I had the typical small dude  chip on my shoulder and walked around in a rage when people would call me fat. 

       It wasn't long before I met the great-great-great-great-great- grand nephew(twice-removed)  of the Roman God Of Wine, who recruited me for Blackthorn Nation.

     My first rugby practice was somewhere in the northeast, and they quickly determined that I was a second row and told me kneel and to put my hand between some fat dudes legs and grab. A scrum seemed kind of meterosexual from the second row, frankly(thanks for the years of support, big Metro AC).

    An  elfish, yet tubby, rugbytuffguy wing was nice enough to pick me up that Saturday in a car full of sugary treats, We wound up at Burholme.  I got into that game in the last ten minutes on the wing and it was a great place for a total novice to stand, in borrowed shorts, cleats and the fabulous wool green and yellow knee highs. As it usually goes on the wing, it was a great place to watch some rugby and get some sun. My experience at wing was so pleasant that I started to think that maybe I was some kind of rugby tough guy. Out there with the butterflies.

     That night at the Mermaid was a night of singing, Elephant walking and "ALL WE OWE, WE OWWWE HER" The party was probably the second bar I had been to. The first bar Was across from CCP and was called Froggies. The cops came in. I cried that I was only in there playing the video game while I waited for my bus. I think I embarrassed the cops and they let me go. Thanks Cops! This the first REAL party I had been to as an "active" participant and a signal from the future that THIS WAS THE SHIT THAT I WOULD BE DOING FOREVER. This is where I learned about Fraternal love. Girls, I dig you now about how loving men is never easy,  they are such assholes!(nohomo).

    The next week was even more legendary as it was a bus trip to DC to play SUD. Club Sudamericana de Rugby.  I was handed a magazine with rucking and other techniques to read and I was good to go! Someone on SUD must have sniffed out my new car smell there on the wing in a borrowed kit.   I soon was fielding a kick. I did what came naturally. Run as fast as I could into the closest group of opponents. Not a good idea, I found out. These dudes were much meaner than the neighbor kids and the our unending "kill the man with the ball" marathons. We had a fine party at the Bottom Line and a boozy bus-ride home. I was the one drinking brandy and puking in the black plastic HUFFY trash bag all the way home with my hyper extended elbow that didn't move for a week or so. Some kind soul dropped me off in Swarthmore on my Aunt's porch in the wee hours of the morning. She was a trooper and didn't say too much. There is a bit of a family history in this arena and her tact and lack of judgement was just one of the reasons that I loved my sainted aunt, Aunt Kitty. She also loved wordplay. So that's who I suppose I am writing for. It could have gone much differently.

   I started to really get rugby Kutztown a year later. This one is easy to pinpoint because, shortly after I dropped out they got a legendary Eagle coach and got a lot better at rugby. Kutztown forged my innate big brother bully machine into a fast mean dude after a summer of running every night. B-side was not cutting the mustard for me. There I was, at my natural position, wing forward, eating light bulbs with West Chester, serenading rugby queens and jumping off roofs with Reading Rugby and the pig who caught on fire. The fathers of Readings finest today. I was dangerously close to graduation and stayed at the beach that summer instead of returning to school. That prompted a move to DC. I was drinking at the Bottom Line and feeling deja vu and the President of the club, approached me and it like sorcery or something.