thinking about 2006. roommate woke me up from a nap on Friday to tell me bo died. we sat down at a table and my girlfriend made us eggs. we sold our tv+playstation drove all night and scalped two tickets. i can close my eyes and see shawn crable moving towards troy smith but the image cuts to black the moment crable dips the crown of his head.

i firmly believe that time split at that very instant. in one timeline smith tucks the ball; gonzales is covered too tightly and so he brings it down, and across his body in a hyperfocused trance, unseeing. crable moves to him pulled by passionate force of destiny. smiths body jerks tonically as he sees the yellow flash of crables helmet at the last instant but it is too late. the ball pops out and david harris goes rigid, leaping upon the dancing darting ball moments before it slithers to touch the sideline. and in this timeline all other catastrophes too are averted. my fathers job is not downsized, or if it is he does not afterward curl inward like a clenching hand, unreachable. daves sister doesn't get in the car that night years later and instead stays in my bed, happy and smiling and warm, giggling and wrinkling her nose from my playful pinches. cancer simply doesn't exist at all

when I was in high school an old man came into the restaurant where i waited tables. he told me about his daughter (deceased) but also about playing for Ohio state in a game against michigan in driving snow. "if you have great achievements you can live on forever in peoples memories. but if you lose like we did nobody remembers you!" he said, which is correct

dreamt last night about watching 1997 game w dad. was holding a glass of red pop when woodson slips past the first man but spilled it when dad shouted "HES GOT IT!" in that moment he channeled the future and could see it, but i do not know how limited his vision was. he could see the touchdown and the rose clenched firmly in woodson's teeth; i know this. but could he see the rest of the decades to come, as if seen in a mirror darkly? did he see gardners final pass, ensnared by violent hands? did he see crable at that moment? what did he see about what will happen today?

now i am alone. a single ticket is in my wallet because even though infinite versions of this game will be played in each of an infinite set of timelines, only one of them is accessible to me. the rest are dark and hidden and will always hum with mystery

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#31993749)

but every sunday before thanksgiving I have boundless optimism to start over again

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#39165131)

Whatever happens saturday was meant to happen and im utterly certain. it couldnt be otherwise

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#39165175)

you can tailgate with us

depending on how far in the future this happens, maybe my daughter will be there

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#39165205)

also one of my best friends from college lived in Maumee but we had kind of a falling out

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#32009513)

she died from respiratory failure in 2010, which was jarring and unexpected to me. she was at work

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#32009564)

their faces showed joy, shock, a flash of empathetic grief, and then thanks. "my dad loved bo," the older man said, shaking my hand. the son cut the tips with a pocketknife. i brought my zippo lighter and touched its dancing flame to each end, tamping my grief into a hard knot and edifying myself to the fact that different winners and losers reign in each timeline

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#32009635)

i leave for columbus tonight, and I will report in the morning

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#37287972)

good morning my little turkey! it is saturday today! even though you and i would usually be together on this saturday, this week is special for a reason i will explain in just a moment. because you're with momma today, i made french toast for you last night and put it in the refrigerator. i talked to momma and she will warm it up for you in the microwave, so even though we are missing our usual day, you can still get our usual breakfast!

i am growing sad in writing this letter to you. but i need you to remember what we've talked about before - when you are around and i am sad sometimes, it is never because of you. instead, i am sad for two reasons. the first reason is that by the time you wake up tomorrow and read this (or, i should say, by the time this letter is read to you), i am very far away from you. after you fell asleep in my arms, i laid you down in your owl blanket (your flower blanket is in the wash at daddy's) and momma came home around 11. i drove as far as i could to the east, then to the south on the highway. it was raining during most of my trip; the water dripped dripped dripped down from the sky and pooled in the low shallow grooves cut into the side of the road, sometimes flashing with the reflected lights from the the bright blue headlamps on daddy's car as they yawned into the darkness

i was not scared as i drove even though i was tired because i have made this drive many times before. i miss you very much; when i stopped to refuel in toledo, one of the trucks operated by the company with the same name as your name was parked behind the speedway. the driver was sleeping, and the darkened cab of the truck made it appear as though the truck was sleeping too. when i saw your name in tall, bold letters on the truck's silvery background, i felt you near to me and in my heart for a moment

i am sad for a second reason too when i write this letter to you. when i was young someone who was once very close to me wrote me letters every week, and i am thinking about him now. i miss him almost as much as i miss you. he ended every letter the same way, with the script penned neatly in his slanting, all-capitalized engineer's print:

"REMEMBER YOU ARE

LOVED BEAT OHIO

STATE!!!

GRANDDAD"

we cannot be together today because by the time you read this, i will be in columbus. it is a city you have never been to. it is in the state of ohio, which you have also never been to. but i am absolutely certain that you will come to know the road to this place very well in time. it might become something you can recall with shut eyes, just as you know by heart the soft fabric of your dinosaur pajamas, or the smell of momma's hair, or the song we sing together on every one of our other saturdays together during the fall when we watch football at daddy's apartment.

even though we are not together, i hope you sing that song today. i will sing it too, because i will be at this week's michigan game in person! you might not remember, but i showed you the ticket when it came in the mail last week on tuesday. you loved the shiny sticker on the front - do you remember what i told you it was called? it is a hologram. depending on how you move the ticket's stiff surface, the light will shine on it to show you either a block M or a buckeye flower. both images can be seen in the ticket, but i could not tell you why sometimes you can see one and sometimes the other. it is as if the ticket contains the potential for either, and we do not always know what it will reveal to us. this is hard to understand

i am very sorry that i cannot watch this game with you. please know that i wish i could, but you are still too young. soon you will be able to go, and then two tickets will come in the mail - one for me and one for you. my grandpa took me to my first one when i was four (you are almost two, so that is two times your age plus a little more). ohio state won, and i cried on the way back to the car. my grandpa didn't say much. i remember staring at my boots as they stirred up frozen crystals of mud during an endless march through and over fields in our return journey to the car

i climbed into the front passenger bench seat of his buick electra with reddened eyes. as i tried to shut the door behind me, he caught the door's rear pillar with one of his hands. i turned to face him and the sun, sitting low in the steely-gray late fall sky, hovered just over his right shoulder, obscuring his face from me. "you can't cry at a time like this," his voice told me, although i don't remember seeing his mouth move in the memory of this moment. "i always remind you how important it is to beat ohio state because they're the best. we lost because we're not as good as they are. if you waste time crying you're ignoring God telling you that you have more work to do to get who you need to be." i remember the middle of his tie - he wore a tie to a football game - twisting back and forth in the wind between its thin spare knot and the spot where the tie tack was pinned, and i remember absolutely nothing else about him until he died. i wish you had met him. i wonder what immortal truth he would reveal to you

i am also very sorry about a lot of other things that have been happening recently. i know it has been hard not to see me and momma every day. i'm sorry i couldn't see you on the actual day thanksgiving, although we did have lots of fun yesterday at our thanksgiving with grandma. i want you to know that it made me very happy to hear that when you saw shea patterson and zach gentry on TV in a commercial you pointed to the screen and shouted "daddy!" i want you to know that when momma cried after you did this, it was not your fault

i want you to think about the puzzle at daddy's apartment, the one where the different pieces are items from a supermarket. remember the piece that looks like an orange, with the smooth, dimpled skin? just like we've practiced, the orange is a CIRCLE. you can run your finger around and around the edge without stopping. if you do it all the way around the edge once, you'll end up back where you started. a circle is a shape where after you finish drawing it, you're ready to draw it again and again. sometimes you will without realizing it

even though we cannot be together today, it is very important that i go. this will be difficult to understand now (it is difficult even for me to understand), but i am very sure today that time does not work like pages in a picture book. the story is not written down and then unveiled like you experience it as i read from them to you. we cannot, with time, skip ahead to the page with your favorite picture. we cannot, with time, know how much longer the story will continue. and if the story becomes dark, we cannot go back to an earlier page

the last time i was here, my sweet girl, michigan did not win. just the way you can with llama llama red pajama, i can recite the words of the story of that game by heart. barrett runs for five yards, spinning to steady himself on a pivoting hand on first down. second down, he tries to shuffle back to throw, but ben gedeon sacks him and the crowd creaks like a house straining against a stiffened wind. my heart leaps forward on third down - curtis samuel is exposed and makes a ferocious stab of faith, reversing the field around and through a quickening pursuit of white and blue, taking a magnificent journey up the sidelines as the crowd roars... but he is just short of the first down marker. on fourth down with mere inches to go, the teams exchange timeouts as harbaugh and meyer size each other up - a male ritual as ancient as ritual itself. eight inches will determine destinies and futures and define the climax and nadir of all things

i know the words on the next page, but i cannot bear to speak them

i am sorry that we cannot be together today to watch this game, my daughter. but since the moment in 2016 when everything turned to ash for michigan, many things in our life have suffered the same fate. there is something in that moment that cannot be put back and that will forever be incomplete and unwhole and i cannot resist but be put back where i started, if not for a successful second chance then for a third, or a fourth, or a ninth

please listen as i say that i know that barrett did not, as he lurched forward straining against wormley's body, make momma and i turn on each other. i know that my Illness was not caused by the ohio state band's frenetic, rapturous rendition of "hang on sloopy" as joyous, screaming waves of scarlet and gray pushed past me to spill onto the field in celebration, nor did their jeers as i walked to the car cause the doctors to miss the diagnosis for as long as they did. i know, too, that your grandma still would have passed away even if speight had seen the intruder cruelly lurking unknowably behind perry, or even if he had managed to halt the release by freezing the motion of his grinding, wounded shoulder. your daddy is not becoming confused or insane.

but that day in 2016 taught me that many things i cherished were not then strong enough to withstand the challenges to which they would be subjected. so as you drink your milk and as momma changes you into clothes fresh and new, please know that although i am far away, it is only because it is time to test myself again.

remember you are loved, my wonderful daughter. beat ohio state.

-dad

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#37291100)

i have missed many of you. see you all in two years

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#37296147)

had to get back to my kiddo tho. took her sledding this morning!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#37298674)

went to good time charleys and drank a few. talked to a beautiful woman at the bar and gave it my all to be charming. “you feel like an old soul,” she said. “im 34,” i said. “a tough 34,” she said with an accommodating closed mouth smile. “like an explorer.” “Indiana Jones,” I offered, with just a touch of self-deprecating tone in my voice to demonstrate that i understood my comparison to be absurd. “no,” she said, “wearier, like the man who found doctor livingstone.” “stanley,” I said. “no,” she said, “that name scarcely seems right to me.”

wandered back to the hotel bar at about eleven pm. an old man leaned against the lip of the bar’s brass rail, his unused cane balanced precariously against the side of the stool on which he sat. we talked about tomorrow’s game of course but mostly his service in the Korean War, prompted by a brief appearance of kim jong un’s formless face on a muted tv screen. “you’ll read in the history books that our involvement carved out a free democratic south korea,” he instructed me. “but we were part of an insurmountable force of modernity and change.” I didn’t follow, and I told him so. “blue jeans and rock and roll are like a steamroller,” he said. “the west is destiny as long as we maintain our cultural dominance. all we did by fighting and dying there was accelerate the inevitable.” “you don’t consider America the victor of that conflict?” I asked him in good faith. “I don’t,” he said. “seoul may look like New York city but one half of that whole damn peninsula turned inward on itself and curled up like an old leaf.” I asked him if he felt as though he had personally made a difference. “no,” he said, and paused in silence for a time, eyes locked on the West Virginia / TCU game. “and like any moral victory, i can not suppress the truth i know that it was meaningless.” i was quiet too; I simply didn’t know what to say. “and that,” he concluded, “is something you may try to forget, but you won’t be able to.”

walked by my old apartment building. a moppy-headed boy wearing high tube socks and reebok classics leaned on the railing of the balcony I used to call my own up on the third floor, a smirking blonde coed by his side. they were talking but between their distance from me and the low thumping bass and tittering babble of parties along packerd street I could not discern what they said to each other. but he took a cigarette from a pack in his pocket and lit it, held it to her lips, and she took a long drag as they locked eyes. success is unmistakable even without dialogue.

my woman drove into town later, calling me when she arrived at the hotel. she looked pretty but tired, and smelled of stale perfume applied long ago and worn down by the sweat of a long workday. her dress was creased at the waist from sitting at her desk all day. we shared a drink in the hotel room. i asked her if she’d remembered to bring the cigars, an annual tradition so frequently underused by michigan fans throughout the past two decades. “of course,” she said, and pulled a peek of four padron 1964s just barely over the top of her purse. “i just couldn’t bear the thought of not being hopeful.” she smiled and i swear i believed the potential for a victory, if only for that moment.

tossing and turning since 2. she sleeps soundly next to me but my heart thunders in my chest. the consequence of a loss tomorrow - no matter how narrow - is utter irrelevance. but the spoils of victory will include an instant reprieve from all of the clawing and eternal pain of an opportunity unseized

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#39192680)

this game is changing me year by year. i will miss you all and will see you once more in november of 2020

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#39215843)

i stare with a relaxed jaw and distant eyes towards the monkey bars where she is laughing and hanging upside-down from her knees. i shiver and it has nothing to do with the cold wind off the river swirling up onto the playground, making my kid’s nose run. i am rapidly trying but failing to make myself respect the essence of today, like a car engine that won’t turn over. i want to feel an ache or a longing or a thrill or a something; some damn swell or tremble of an ancestor memory in response to what this day once meant to generations of loyal men in battle creek and findlay, from saginaw to lima, reminiscing of ann arbor and columbus. but - unable to summon anything of the sort - i feel the breathless and silent shame felt by any good man who unwittingly breaks a promise, or by any faithful son who forgets his mother’s birthday.

i tell myself michigan and ohio state will, rest assured, play later. i tell myself the delay is attributable to the pandemic, to the country ripping apart and turning against itself, to a paralyzed leadership class too bloated to make decisions. i tell myself it’s not my fault, assure myself i’ve been busy, remind myself there is much burdening my mind. but it is the third thursday in november and i have not thought about the ohio state game for even a second all year. even now i feel surprise and guilt, not excitement. my love for this game and what it means and what it has always meant stares at this moment like an eye pressed to a darkened telescope, aimed at a gap of emptiness between stars.

“what are we going to do today daddy?” she asks as she runs to me. i have no idea, so i reply: “i have no idea.” but she doesn't know what we were going to do today. i wince briefly at a twinge of shame; i have denied her a kind of birthright and she has the grace to not even resent it. she didn't deserve this, but it serves as evidence i don't deserve her.

“then let’s make today special,” she says, burying her face in my thighs while hugging my legs tightly. “it once was, and i thought it would always be,” i think but do not say. we walk back to the car and the absence of emotion throbs and howls within my chest like the pain of a phantom limb.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#41413174)

To my left, to my right, in repeating rows of rank and file spaced approximately ten feet apart, were man-sized columns made each of a single shard of blue-gray crystal. Each crystal had before it a brass plaque raised from the floor at a slight angle with the name of a person. The etching was faint but legible - those crystal columns close to me bore the names of men and women i did not recognize. I was of course perplexed and disoriented, never having been here before or anywhere quite like it. The crystal columns were sharp-angled on the sides with the randomness and disorder for which crystal growths are most usually known

One hundred yards before me sat a small raised dias - the only differentiating feature, along with the inlaid letters, that interrupted the endless rows of crystals. I ran to it, my boots clacking along the tile. I ascended the steps of the dias, finding an apple placed upon a pedestal at the top level of the dias. The apple had alabaster white skin, but I was horrified to find as i bit into it that the flesh was black, not with rot, but a material capable of conveying a message to me telepathically. The knowledge I gained from the apple did not “speak” to me in any proper way. But I came to know by eating the apple that the HALL OF REGRETS was an ever-growing institution which would last of ceaseless duration forever. Each crystal represented a person, living or dead. Touching the surface of any crystal would allow the voice of the represented to tell a candid and harrowing tale - some story, true and complete, of some event which left the speaker haunted and instilled with contrition, grief, or remorse. The apple made me know that not everyone would have an opportunity to visit the hall, but that once a crystal spoke it would never speak again. Each listener would have to choose the stories he or she would receive with great care; the listener himself or herself would remain the only creature in existence who could wield the story each crystal had to tell. I finished eating the apple, which tasted as bittersweet as the opportunity with which the hall offered to me, but i learned nothing more

I stopped in this moment, hesitating just as you too would have. The crystal columns stretched for eternity in every direction around me as I turned in a circle. Dozens of millions of disembodied voices stood in representation of so many centuries of agony, pain, shame, and grief. It was overwhelming to me, and i motioned back to try and lean against the pedestal which had once borne the apple, but i was surprised to find that the dias and the pedestal had disappeared, leaving me once more flush standing on the tiled ground. How would i ever decide whose stories to receive? And how would i find those stories once i accepted the burden to receive them?

But there was no answer, no guide. So i decided to look for the crystal belonging to a girl i knew once who passed away last year. We had briefly been lovers during an uncertain time in my life, and we ended our relations with true grace and mutuality. She married a man of unparalleled quality and integrity, and i lost contact with her. I was heartbroken to hear that she had died - I’d barely come to know that she’d been sick at all.

I walked into the field of crystals to try and determine their organization. Was it by era? Alphabetical? Nation of origin? And to my surprise I determined that the first crystal belonged to her. This was an important revelation - I would need only to decide whose story I wished to hear for that crystal to appear near to me. The brass etching of her name glinted from the sourceless light as i ran my fingers over its depressions.

I hesitated before touching her crystal. Did I have the right to access her memory? But the apple told me that not every person would be fortunate enough to appear in this realm; perhaps I was her only chance for her story to be told and for it to return to the realm of ordinary being. I hovered my hand above the pale blue surface for a few moments out of nerve, which gave me time to observe that her crystal was flecked with thousands of small bubble-like occlusions. Should I touch it? The hall rang with complete and utter silence. The knowledge earned from the apple provided no guidance.

Impulsively, I laid my hand flat to the surface. A tear formed on my eye because I heard her voice clearly aloud and with my ears, her words formed with her accent twinged with sadness as she might have conveyed her story in life. I don’t wish to transcribe it for you today, reader, but her regret was not discovering her illness sooner. She’d fainted once in law school and ignored it, leaving the cancer growing in her brain until years later when she had married T and had her two young daughters, each approximately the age of my own. She discovered her fatal ailment when she complained of headaches, and told T only two days later. They wept and it was not the last time they wept together, but it was nearly the last, as she died fewer than four months later. She conveyed with a shaking voice the agony that her inaction might cause to her daughters and her husband and her family, who were left to navigate life without her kindness and light. I made a resolution to tell T immediately upon… waking? Returning to life? I buried, deep inside me, a shame - I’d hoped her story would mention me in some way, or that the crystal would know the recipient of the information such that I could hear her say my name once more. But I was never mentioned in the story once, which made me disappointed and then immediately disgusted with my own self. Her story wasn’t for me - it had nothing to do with me.

When her story ended, the color and glow of the crystal changed markedly and deep fractures and cracks spread across its surface. I jumped, startled, as it shattered and dissolved into billions of tiny shards like a fine mist, sinking into the tile when the glasslike dust drifted to the ground.

I stopped, then, for a while, and sat to consider the magnitude of the curse and opportunity presented by my presence in the HALL OF REGRET. But nothing more changed, and I did not wish to sit forever. I rose and made my next visits.

I visited crystals belonging to some of my heroes in life and some ancestors I’d never met. Their stories flooded into me before their crystals too disappeared into nothing. I put my hand to the crystals of some historical figures, but many of those I wished to visit had been extinguished prior by some former visitor. I found a crystal belonging to my daughter, and although I wept because regrets within the chest of someone so young broke my heart thoroughly, I owe a duty to her future such that some other person - as yet unknown - should have the privilege to access it later. After composing myself I visited the crystals of my grandfather and father. I wish to share neither of their stories with the reader - my grandfather’s story belongs only to me, and I affirmatively shattered my father’s crystal before I could hear his tale. Both outcomes will serve fitting ends for those men, each of whom have passed and will harbor no new regrets.

After visiting a few more, on a lark, I encountered a new copse of crystal columns belonging to souls who all shared one common experience - they were all former participants in or witnesses to various iterations of The Game. Columbus and Ann Arbor men all, these souls each have stories attached to one version or another of that classic conflict, stories which burdened or now burden their hearts.

Now, dear reader, I ask you - which memories from persons in Ohio State - Michigan past should I receive?

>> [SELECT A FORMER PLAYER OR COACH] ??

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#43483752)

>> SHAWN SPRINGS

"My name is Shawn Springs. I played cornerback for the Ohio State University between 1994 and 1996. You already know what I got to say, why I'm trapped here in the HALL OF REGRET. But I bet you don't know why.

It's hard to have a famous daddy - especially when he was famous for doing the thing you supposed to be good at. But the secret is that I knew my daddy when nobody knew him, so I know who he really is. And he knew me before I was anybody at all.

I was born in the VA, I been told. In 1975, my daddy was but a high school senior; my momma hadn’t even graduated yet. They were classmates, prom dates. Story as old as time, right? My mom got pregnant with me, and my daddy needed a plan right fast. He was all-state, ran like the wind but had pop behind his pads in a way I never really did. But he wasn’t focused in school, not like I was. So he needed to go to the community college, and that meant leaving for this place in Kansas you ain’t heard of. Called Coffeeville, no bullshit. My momma told me the story about him leaving. She was still pregnant with me, and he told her he had to go but he’d be back. She cried she say and told him not to go, her momma told her that she’d never see that man again. Momma told me that daddy put his hand gently on her cheek, told her he’d be back once he made it. “My feet never done failed me yet,” he told her, “they not gonna start now.”

He left for Kansas and for the first year it looked like my grandmomma was right about that man. He didn’t call or write, momma was beside herself sad because now I was born and she was worried about making it. Moved with her momma and me to Silver Springs up in Maryland. But can’t run away from the news, you heard? Momma told her that somebody left a newspaper cut up on her bed - daddy was junior college player of the year. Momma told me that her momma said to her “can you believe it?” And my momma said back “yes I can.” Momma said he was gonna come out the East Coast, play for Maryland - that was the plan at first. But the first time daddy called her in a year it was to tell her he had bigger plans: he was going to the Ohio State University to play for Woody Hayes. “Don’t you worry now,” momma said he said. “I’m gonna make the pros and we gonna live together then with Shawn.” Momma said he told him back: “Feet best not fail you then.” Daddy told me later he knew based on that however he came home he was comin home to us.

Momma wasn’t happy about that, and I was too little to know the difference. Hadn’t ever met the man at that point but I was already startin to get around a little bit. Momma said I could run before I could walk. Don’t know if that’s true but I do have one memory about the great Ron Springs, must have been but four or five. Watched him play Purdue on the TV, momma was freakin out because that was her man, right? And there he was in living color. He motioned out wide this one time and took an option pitch from the slot, he almost got forced out of bound by one of their defensive backs but he kept his balance and tiptoed along that sideline all the way in - must have been 60 yards for the touchdown. That night after momma went to bed I snuck out the house and went to the playground across the street. I fell a few times but it had this metal balance beam, I ran back and forth along it until I could sprint. I panicked when I saw the sun came up and jumped back in my bed without momma knowing. I had good feet too.

Well, you know the story. Daddy got drafted by the Dallas Cowboys and off we moved to go be with him. He made a go of it too. Five years with the Cowboys then off to Florida where he played for the Bucs a little till his body started breaking down like it do for running backs. So we moved back on up to Silver Springs where my grandmomma still was livin. She told us to stop the foolishness and come live in with her. My daddy told her “thank you for takin care of my girl and my boy, but I’m home now so if anybody livin with anybody you’re comin with me.” I heard him say that cause I was there.

Thing is with athletes, they tend to lose a lot of steam when they gettin old. Diabetes took over fast. In 1990 I was just goin into high school and made varsity as a freshman, same year I was fastest 100 yard dash in the state. But my daddy kept getting sick and we spent a lot of time visiting him in the hospital. One time we showed up and his foot was all bandaged like - it look like a mummy’s foot just restin up high in a sling. You know the thing about the diabetes is they have to take your toes. Or at least that’s what happened to him - cut off two on one foot, had to take all the other foot, the whole damn thing. “They cut your toes?” I asked him, “can they give you some of mine?” - keep in mind I was little then, but I wasn’t making jokes. “First time ever my feet done failed me,” he told me while laughing. “And your feet better than mine ever was. You make sure yours don’t fail you, they’ll take you far Shawn.” Something about the way he said my name like that. I won’t admit it if you tell but I cried just thinkin about my daddy coming out to watch me play. Next game he could show up to, I caught a pass in the flat and crossed that whole field to come to the side where he was sittin with my momma. I hugged it tight to the sideline and sprinted upfield until I scored. I never asked him if that seemed familiar, but I bet you it did.

Got into the Ohio State University just like daddy. And I could run like the wind at that level too, best believe. By my freshman year I started a little bit - got a big stick against Michigan that made the ball pop out like how garlic jump in a hot pan. Sophomore year I realized I was gonna be a pro, and Coach Cooper said so too. Junior year I was the star of the whole team. That was the first thing I ever did that my daddy didn’t do first and better. And that team was damned good too. Ripped off 10 wins in a row - at number two in the country, had a shot for an undefeated season. It became my obsession and my goal because if I accomplished it, that’d be the second thing I ever did that my daddy couldn’t or didn’t. I’m a Christian so I pray, you know? And I ended each prayer with something close to what my daddy said - “Don’t let my feet fail me now.”

The one last obstacle we had to take down was an important one - the Michigan game. Now, don’t get this confused - Michigan fights us like a pack of dogs everytime we play. They’d beat us bad the prior year, even though I’d turned the game around my freshman year so I was 1-1 at that point. I had skinny legs, so when they handed out the gold pants awards from beating Michigan that year Orlando told me “Shawn, they be lookin like they fit you!” I told him in the locker room that I was gonna get one more pair by beating Michigan a second time so they could click together on a necklace or whatever. My helmet was full of them stickers because I’d had a great year but the thing I wanted most? To get another gold pants. A couple times it felt so close to happening that I swear I reached to grab my chain and I felt the weight of two of em, but I guess I might just been wrong. Michigan was a seventeen point underdog, though, so I knew I had more than a shot. And they was in our house.

Gameday 1996, right? The big show, right? Coach Cooper told me I was gonna be matched up all day against “slim 86” - the one the only Mr. Tai Streets. People ask me what I think about Tai. Tell you the truth I don’t like him. Year before he caught an out route against me halfway through the game, he was just a freshman. It’s one thing to get burned by a freshman, that happen sometimes. But he got up and immediately started talkin to me. “I don’t give a fuck who your daddy is!” he jawed my way as he went back to the huddle. “You not gonna catch another pass over me today fresh,” I shouted back. He had angry eyes, like he was gonna show me, like he DEFIANT. Didn’t catch another damn ball. Best part though was we got an interception that year and I popped him on the return. I remember his face then wasn’t so stern; he looked defeated. And although they won that year, I decided I was gonna make the scoreboard match his spirit in 96.

You know how plans go. Sometimes they working and you feel blessed. We had em shut out at halftime. I had an interception and we were leading the game. Things were tough and tight, but I was giving the business to Tai. Just punishing him. “You know who my daddy is, you know who YOUR daddy is,” I told him and I swear I saw his face change like I got in his head a little bit. Went tight on coverage but even when he’d wriggle free I kept up step for step, loose feet carryin me all the way. “I’ma get those pants, Orlando,” I shouted as we entered the locker room at halftime.

But I didn’t get the pants. And although the diabetes would take my dad after he wouldn’t take a kidney transplant from me decades later, my story today ain’t about that. You know what’s comin already. But I gotta tell you anyway. This the HALL OF REGRETS.

It’s the third quarter, Michigan got the ball. We stop em, they stop us, they on offense just barely out they own endzone. They send motion to the weak side, away from Slim 86 who’s lined up but a rabbit hair away from my facemask. I’ve been in his shirt all day with press cover but it’s cover 2 now and their quarterback a walk on so he don’t see it. I got two things I’m thinkin about - don’t get beat deep to the sideline, and if it’s a slant or an in funnel inside, let the safety take him, and then I’m gonna light up Tai.

They snap the ball, and I see Streets flinch because old boy thought I was gonna press him, but I don’t. I start my backpedal into cover 2 and the slot goes vertical, so the safety takes him. Streets slants hard away from me, what I thought was a flinch was an entry cut and now he’s runnin fast as hell away from me on an angle. Linebacker is coming over but Tai’s speed surprised me, I must admit. So I decide to put on the gas to get over the top of him. I’m the fastest player in the country - I got my daddy’s balance with double the speed. Tai is fast, but I know I can recover position. I see the ball come out of they quarterback’s hand, and then…

My foot slipped. I fell down.

I can’t explain it. It’s like in slow motion.

The field wasn’t wet. I know cover 2. I’m faster than Tai and I already proved it today.

But God, help me - I fell down.

Well, we didn’t score again. Slim 86 took it all the way into the endzone, and then two more field goals was enough to do it. We lost 13-9 and I went pro. So I never played Michigan again. And I was the reason we lost.

Now, my life is blessed - I had a long NFL career, made the Pro Bowl several times, was a consensus All-American that same year we talkin about. But when I get down to pray - and this just sometimes now, this just when the nights get too deep or when I feel too alone so I return to the past - I ask why then. Why then. I stood to inherit something my daddy had taken for himself and then given to me and that I ran with. Why then. Something to link us through time.

I got one last thing to say. You know what? I never told nobody this. But when I slipped I caught myself with my hand and recovered, but it was too late - Tai was too fast for me to make it up before he scored. And Tai went straight vertical as soon as he caught that ball, so he’s dusting everybody. But at the last second before he knew he’d broke away he looked back at me. And I’d seen his face angry, I’d seen his face defeated, and so I expect to see his face joyful, right? I’d jawed him all game and now he was putting it right in my eye in front of everybody - what was supposed to be my big moment became his with one small stumble. So shouldn’t he feel elation? Shouldn’t he be boastful? Happy? Something?

But the thing that haunts me beyond all that is this. When he looking back at me, we made eye contact for just a second before I even got all the way to my feet. And I can’t explain why Tai’s face looked like it did in that one second. But he wasn’t none of those happy things I would expect. No, the look on his face was damn near unmistakable. He’d seen my feet fail me, and he was disappointed."

Shawn's crystal shatters into dust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0upwc0i0hI (the play)

>> [SELECT A FORMER PLAYER OR COACH] ??

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#43488657)

This thread is now over, go blue

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#43561439)

tomorrow is written in a language I will never understand

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#45545553)

watching donovan edwards

blasting through heavy 2-gap duo

forever

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#45549188)

I confess not understanding; but I swear it is only truth. Upon my arrival, the rock had been pushed aside, and I journeyed within. I heard my heart beat quicken within myself. My breath echoed against the rock wall.

The tomb was empty.

Not always but sometimes: believing is the consequence of having seen.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#47079949)

“Did you enter the tomb?” she said, facing away from me.

“I did enter the tomb,” I told her.

She reached for the broom by the hearth and swept crumbs from the bread out the front door, pausing after a moment and looking me in the eye. “And did you come to find, as we have heard, that he was not there?”

I paused. “He was not there.”

She pursed her lips. Set the broom on the wall. Our house was silent.

“Do you think me to be mad?” I asked after a moment.

She averted eye contact for a moment. “No,” she said at last. “I think you have only spoken truth to me over these many years. You have goodness and honesty alone in your blood. I recall when you had thoughts of another but you came to me before you touched her skin. I was so angry but you confessed before you were guilty.”

“I did,” I said, a little upset she resurrected this old conflict once more.

“So if he has left the tomb,” she said slowly, looking outside to the field where the animals grazed the pasture. “If he has left the tomb, you must now go and tell the world.”

I didn’t understand, and I told her so.

“Our Lord is missing,” she said. “And He has proven divine. So it is up to you to secure victory for us.”

I was silent.

“Fulfill what I expect of you. In whatever way you choose,” she said.

So I left to spread the word.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#47096437)

so i press the right letters in the right order, and as the stone ledges erupt from the cliffs’ surface, i begin to climb.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#47263904)

approximately an hour later I layed awake. she rested, warm and silent, on her side by mine and facing away from me.

“did you see it?” I asked her in the darkness.

“No one can say,” she said, and she did not turn around.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#47981684)

So we do what middle aged has-beens do, and we flocked to the elders to feel youthful by comparison. Ray fit the bill. Was Ray seventy? Eighty? He wore a faded blue Michigan sweater and drank something clear. His face had the texture of someone who had seen too much sun and too little laughter. His eyes were blue or gray or green, who could remember.

I started by asking him about the game, he expressed concern about whether Texas had managed to improve their secondary sufficiently to stifle Michigan through the air. She asked if he was a grad; he is, class of 67. Retired? From the Air Force. Wife passed, he commutes in for every home game from Linden. Just down 23.

Bethany knows I can’t help myself, so I ask. Had he served in Southeast Asia? He had. I could see her shoot me a look of soft concern as I followed up: in a flight role? Yes, drove F-4s in the 390th tactical fighter squadron out of Da Nang. “Blue Boars,” he said. “What?” Beth asked. “Blue Boars. Each squadron has a nickname,” he said. “Like a sports team,” she said, swishing around the thick stripe of gin at the bottom of her gin and soda. “You got it,” he said, not looking away from the TV showing a weird Friday night NFL game.

I love aviation, so I said something vapid: “F-4 is a pretty cool plane,” I said, louder than I’d intended. Bethany’s eyebrow moved to a nearly imperceptible degree. “It’s a big powerful —“ I offered to her, trying to make peace from an exclusionary conversation, but she cut me off. “Yes, the Phantom, it’s a fighter, I know,” she said, looking only at Ray. “He loves airplanes,” she explained to him with a strained but soft patience. “He builds models in our basement when he can’t sleep.” I frowned, this was confidential information, and I was vaguely offended by the disclosure. But it wasn’t offense as much as embarrassment.

“Can’t hide who you are from a woman,” I offered to Ray, trying subtly to take the power back. But Bethany put her hand on my knee to offer peace. “He thinks I don’t listen,” she said, nominally to Ray. “But I love him, so I am always careful to observe and remember the things he loves about the world.” I softened despite myself, and I patted her thigh.

She leaned in towards Ray. “Know what I always thought from the first time I saw the phantom?” she asked him. Ray snapped his attention towards her. For a flash, I could see her through his eyes, how beautiful she is even when too often I deigned to remember only how beautiful she’d been when I first found her. Her dark tan skin of strong bold face wrinkled so slightly as she offered a theatrical closed mouth smile. Ray laughed despite himself. “What’s that?” he asked with the surprised and sudden arrival of interest. “Yeah, Beth, what is that?” I thought but didn’t say.

“UGLY plane,” she said, slurring to just the most minute degree. “Inartful. Crude even. Wings bend up, tail bends down. Nose stretches out. Gross flat underside,” she said, pantomiming the slope of it with her extended hand. “All flat angles instead of curves. No curves to it. It has CORNERS,” she said, italicizing the final word with contempt with her voice. “Nothing so fast should be so…” she stopped in thought, or consideration. “So unsexy!”

Ray took a beat, and laughed a genuine laugh. I did too, despite myself. Bethany had always combined one dash of weird with every ten dashes of her charming. As we’d aged that hadn’t changed. I’d never loved anyone even a faint fraction as much. “It IS ugly!” he shouted, as if remembering for the first time something he’d heretofore known only unconsciously. “It’s a damn ugly bird,” he said, looking down at the table as he shook his head, awed by revelation.

“But powerful,” I said next, triggering something new in him. “But POWERFUL,” he repeated, his eyes fading into distant focus. “The damn sled weighed 20 tons, but we could throw on bombs and missiles and fuel tanks and shit and it could carry ten more tons under those big gross wings,” he said, pointing to Bethany. “And STILL it produced enough thrust to push you to the speed of sound in mere seconds. We’d train the young ones and you could always tell the first time they’d pushed throttle all the way out from how pale they’d be back at the mess hall. I can sometimes hear the throaty roar of those two engines still when I start to fall asleep.”

“Was it ever beautiful to fly?” Bethany asked, turning her head slightly. I could tell she heard the girlishness of her voice and rejected it, retreating to her midwestern center and lowering her voice a quarter octave before clarifying: “although I’m sure it was scary frequently.”

Ray looked away and exhaled a tight, short breath through his nose with pursed lips. He paused for a moment, a hesitation completely unmarred by affectation. “You know that feeling when you’re on vacation, and you catch yourself thinking of home? And then how it’s like after you return you weren’t ever even really there?” He paused again and looked back at us, checking, I think, to see if we’d lost him. Satisfied (or resigned?), he continued. “Flying was all I ever wanted to do, from the moment i was old enough to see that a man was unlike a bird in any way but for the ability to fly. I went to college here and I loved the joyful fraternity of being young, but I really just wanted to be up there. So I think I kind of slept while waking through my youth, dreaming of a future in flight. I felt pure white hot dedication in training, starting in props and graduating to World War 2 junk turbojet nothing, before certifying in the biggest baddest bird in the world.” He paused, pointed to Bethany. “To the ugliest bird in the world.” We both smiled.

“So actually, I wasn’t scared at all. I knew enough about my craft to understand that my survival depended on attention, intentionality, skill, and luck, but I also felt in unity amidst my purpose. Once we flew low and fast over Cambodia, running an early early morning combat air patrol looking for the flash of an unpainted MiG underside thousands of feet above us. That part of the world is an armpit; wet and hot and stifling. So heat lightning was constant anytime there was pressure change due to temperature. And I remember pushing up my flight visor and watching the sun rise and realizing I could not feel this connection, this fulfillment but for being born in that time and in the place of my home.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

“That sounds amazing,” Bethany said, unburdened due to the fairer sex’s fearlessness of sounding trite.

“It was fleeting,” he said. “We were struck by a semi-active radar missile on a sortie we flew about two months after that morning. I say ‘we’ because you fly with a buddy in the backseat in that aircraft.” He looked at his drink. “I didn’t order an ejection, but I should have. Anyway, I pulled the handles and rocketed out once i saw i had zero oil pressure in either compressor. Some fucking bastard must have hit me right in the ass. We’d seen patrols but our radar didn’t look down, so they must have come from below us. I didn’t even have tone.” He moved his lower jaw from side to side, grinding tooth against tooth.

“Did your friend make it?” I asked despite myself.

“No idea, which means no,” he said. “Don’t know if he bailed out and died later or never even got to try. Of course, I didn’t find that out until I got home,” he said.

I understood. Bethany didn’t, and asked him why not.

“They found me before the good guys did. I spent just about thirty months in a camp, then about five more in a prison. Knew a lot of good people, but all of the ones who treated me like a human being looked like me.”

Abruptly, he stood up, opened his wallet, and threw three twenty dollar bills on the bar. “It was lovely to speak with both of you tonight,” he said, snapping into a smile. “Have a round on this old man.”

“No, sir,” I said, genuinely eager to extend a kindness. “Keep it. Let me buy you a drink for your service.”

He laughed a short laugh, and looked at me. “Do we recognize the good times when we’re in em? Or do we only assign them that status in memory? I can’t say. But I can say that when I go back to the days before I was captured I knew what I’d been born to do, and when I got back home the Phantom was fit for scrap and I was tied to a desk.” He smiled. “So please, it’s on me. And, in that spirit, try to remember if we’re losing tomorrow that we were once the champions.” He snapped his wallet shut and left.

Bethany and I looked at each other. “I’m drunk,” she said, smiling that legendary Bethany smile, “but let’s go downstairs for a while before we go home.”

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#48058903)

there was a moment, when I sprinted from hole to hole, that I briefly thought that I wanted to go home.

but in this foreign land, I was home. so I kept running until i leapt into the wild staring eyes of my enemies, unseeing

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3440990&forum_id=2#48395469)