Last Thoughts at the Ten

By K. J. Main

The smell of newly hewn grass permeated the air around me, its soft yielding touch beneath my feet reminding me of home and the large farm pastures next to our house . I remember laying on the ground, back then, and staring into the white cumulus, just letting my thoughts flow into random patterns, with no cares to interrupt. Presently, I found myself looking into the blue skies looking for... oh yea, still there after all these years. As I watched the soft cotton clouds moving slowly above, a gentle breeze washed over me, it's cool fingers caressing, easing. It would have been a quite a serine moment had it not been for the 70,000 pairs of eyes intently watching to see if I would fail, or succeed, at the task that lay only 10 feet before me.

And so there it lay, oblong and brown, just waiting for me. I remembered from a movie the rule of setting this task correctly, "Laces out!", and my position was set by copying what I had seen other men, much more experienced men, do at least a hundred times. And now my turn waited , but only one thing was going though my mind, a question, just one simple question, HOW THE HELL DID I GET HERE!

It started with a phone call...

" Kevin, Robby's on the phone, he wants to ask you something."

"Hello."

"Kev, how'd you like to go to the game on Sunday?"

"Okay."

"I won some tickets through Lil' Champ and I get to kick the football before the game starts!"

"Cool." You may be thinking that my demeanor was a bit calm for all this good news, but you have to understand, our friend Robert is possibly the luckiest game contestant I have ever seen. If he plays the lottery one week, I won't. I can't tell you how many movies I have seen, how many games I've been to and how often he's come over with an arm full of prizes. Believe me this was a common conversation for us.

"Yea, and if I beat this other guy at the north goal kicking three balls, I get to kick at half time from the fifty yard line for twenty-five thousand bucks."

"What do I get?"

"You get to go to the game free and watch me win!"

"Works for me!"

"I'll pick you up and we have to meet up with a guy named..."

"Hello, my name is Marvin Weaver, I'm Wayne's (Jag owner) nephew, and you must be Robert?"

"Yes sir, and this is my friend Kevin."

"Well Kevin, do I have a surprise for you. This other guy Robert's kicking against looks like a no show, so it looks like you're it!" and thumped my chest.

"What!" and believe me I had no time to protest, he was headed for the stadium calling out behind me, " You kick in fifteen minutes!"

I guess that answers my question.

It's hard to describe just how large a full stadium looks from the field. I mean It's really, really big, and I was really, really small, well, small until I noticed the camera crew standing four feet from my face and saw my boyish six foot grin on the largest Jumbotron in the world! Later, I learned that maybe had I listened hard enough I may have heard the frantic screaming of some fellow workers at the game who suddenly realized "Hey ! That's Kevin!" No! I have not lived this down even three years later!

To this day I still can't believe how calm I was, I mean relatively speaking. I couldn't have thread a needle but I didn't trip over my own shoes either. But I did have a decision to make. For those of you who don't know, I have about thirty percent of my ACL left in my one knee. Had I known I was going to be debuting my NFL career I would have worn my brace , and without it a catastrophe waited at the ten yard line. So, did I go for it and get carried off the field, or do I just get it over and run. What would you have done?

Epilogue: This was the count at the end of the day. Robert and I both got to keep a game ball and Jag jerseys. Robert won a pair of tickets to anywhere in the continental U.S.. The grounds keeper at the stadium got to repair a rather large divot several inches from the fifty (if he was paying attention the smell of about five Bloody Mary's may still have been lingering: Robert missed the ball) and the Jacksonville Jaguars beat the crap out of the Pittsburgh Steelers!

Not a bad day really.

Oh yeah, I got booed by seventy thousand people.

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