Indoor Football
Inside an empty house. No furniture, but the fixtures are all still there. Bare floors, no carpeting. All of the windows still in place. And I'm guessing we're in the dining room, at least that's what it seems given its placement in the house, the ceiling light, the modest paneling.
I'm in full football gear, but a practice jersey. We're in the red mesh penneys, and the other guys are in blue. We're in a scrum in the middle of the room, some on the deck and others on their feet, and we're all battling over the ball, which I can only guess is at the bottom of the pile. I feel a coach nearby egging us on, calling out pointers, but I can't see him.
This isn't football, and it's not rugby. It's no game I'm familiar with, although the various component parts seem clear enough. I'm guessing we block, and whoever has the ball is in control and likely to win. That's enough for me to figure out, so I'm ready to go.
Suddenly the ball is ripped out, up and out of the wriggling pile on the floor and it's in the hands of my team. Five of us head for the corner of the room, a couple of blues chasing. We round the corner with a flash of kitchen, then it's another sharp left through the empty family room. As we rumbled through the family room and into the front foyer, again angling left, I hear one of the guys say clearly, "Let's take it around again and stick it to the blues." So we form up tight, holding onto each other's jerseys, a five-guy ball-carrying element. We turn the left from the foyer into the empty living room, and I suddenly wonder why we aren't having problems with gaining our footing on the hard bare wood floors, given the football boots we're wearing. The noise of the studs on our boots is deafening as we rush into the living room, the wide open portal into the dining room right in front of us, with the remnants of the just-completed pile just starting to sort out.
We pull even more closer as we take the final rushing strides toward the pile, oblivious to whether there are blue or red players in front of us. The other guys are just seeing us rumbling toward them, and they're trying to organize a defense. But they're not ready, not together, not linked or cohesive. We've got the ball, and we're going to run it right down the throat of anyone in our way. As the first cascading ripple of the hit reaches me, back in my third position, everything shifts.
It's now after practice, and we're all at a large table, right there in the same dining room. We're in our playing pants and the t-shirts we wear under our pads, still sweaty and hot. The table is circular, and big, maybe 15 feet across. We're all around it, what I'm guessing to be my team, maybe 20 of us all together. I think a coach is talking/lecturing, but I can't be sure. I'm fascinated to watch what I guess to be some kind of strange team ritual. There are a couple of large shallow bowls, made of that elementary school cafeteria, mustard yellow clay-plastic material to make them indestructible and impervious to all damage. There's a single large plastic spoon in each very shallow bowl, almost a big plate other than it's subtle depth. Filling each bowl is a thick red salsa. I can smell it, unable to tell if it's fresh or factory. Each player takes a big spoonful and just slurps it down, then pushes the bowl back toward the center of the table. There's no apparent order in this, and no one appears to be in a rush. I wonder if it's spicy. To me it looks like some kind of strange communion, something that everyone just does, sharing from the same bowl and the same spoon. I can't think of a reason why in the world the communion medium would be salsa, though.
I'm in full football gear, but a practice jersey. We're in the red mesh penneys, and the other guys are in blue. We're in a scrum in the middle of the room, some on the deck and others on their feet, and we're all battling over the ball, which I can only guess is at the bottom of the pile. I feel a coach nearby egging us on, calling out pointers, but I can't see him.
This isn't football, and it's not rugby. It's no game I'm familiar with, although the various component parts seem clear enough. I'm guessing we block, and whoever has the ball is in control and likely to win. That's enough for me to figure out, so I'm ready to go.
Suddenly the ball is ripped out, up and out of the wriggling pile on the floor and it's in the hands of my team. Five of us head for the corner of the room, a couple of blues chasing. We round the corner with a flash of kitchen, then it's another sharp left through the empty family room. As we rumbled through the family room and into the front foyer, again angling left, I hear one of the guys say clearly, "Let's take it around again and stick it to the blues." So we form up tight, holding onto each other's jerseys, a five-guy ball-carrying element. We turn the left from the foyer into the empty living room, and I suddenly wonder why we aren't having problems with gaining our footing on the hard bare wood floors, given the football boots we're wearing. The noise of the studs on our boots is deafening as we rush into the living room, the wide open portal into the dining room right in front of us, with the remnants of the just-completed pile just starting to sort out.
We pull even more closer as we take the final rushing strides toward the pile, oblivious to whether there are blue or red players in front of us. The other guys are just seeing us rumbling toward them, and they're trying to organize a defense. But they're not ready, not together, not linked or cohesive. We've got the ball, and we're going to run it right down the throat of anyone in our way. As the first cascading ripple of the hit reaches me, back in my third position, everything shifts.
It's now after practice, and we're all at a large table, right there in the same dining room. We're in our playing pants and the t-shirts we wear under our pads, still sweaty and hot. The table is circular, and big, maybe 15 feet across. We're all around it, what I'm guessing to be my team, maybe 20 of us all together. I think a coach is talking/lecturing, but I can't be sure. I'm fascinated to watch what I guess to be some kind of strange team ritual. There are a couple of large shallow bowls, made of that elementary school cafeteria, mustard yellow clay-plastic material to make them indestructible and impervious to all damage. There's a single large plastic spoon in each very shallow bowl, almost a big plate other than it's subtle depth. Filling each bowl is a thick red salsa. I can smell it, unable to tell if it's fresh or factory. Each player takes a big spoonful and just slurps it down, then pushes the bowl back toward the center of the table. There's no apparent order in this, and no one appears to be in a rush. I wonder if it's spicy. To me it looks like some kind of strange communion, something that everyone just does, sharing from the same bowl and the same spoon. I can't think of a reason why in the world the communion medium would be salsa, though.
posted by Scrumpox at 8:36 AM
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