Mr Mascellani's Musings

I Remember Sports Day

When I was a kid at school, I used to say a prayer every night before Sports Day.

I prayed for fires, floods, earthquakes, plagues of locusts, anything so as that Sports Day would be cancelled.

But no matter what I promised God in return for him granting me this favour, much more often than not, the next day would turn out to be a perfect day for sport.

I would awaken to hear the birds chirping, and see the sun shining. Tears would well in my eyes and there would be not butterflies but bats in my stomach. I fuckin' hated Sports Day.

I went to school at a time and place when and where sports were enjoyable only if you excelled at them. If you were mediocre, they sucked to varying degrees, and if- God forbid- like me you were totally hopeless at them, they were a nightmare.

Week after week, year after year of not being picked for any team, and then having to suffer the humiliation of being assigned to a team by a teacher-with the refrains of

"But we don't want him, Sir".

Or

"Do we have to have him, Miss"?

ringing in my ears was not a confidence or self-esteem booster let me tell you.

Nowadays, it is considered un 'PC' to say that a guy runs or throws 'like a girl’ and mean it as an insult. Back then you could say that and worse. Both students and teachers could yell at the top of their voices that someone was running or throwing like a
'spastic' and no one would even bat an eyelid, it was normal, it was accepted, and it was fucked.

After I had my apotheosis at 12, I decided that I would rather get canned than do sport. And so from 12 to 14, I received six cuts of the cane, once a week for not bringing my sports clothes to school. I would also have to pick up papers around the school yard with the other sports haters.

More often than not, I would leave the school grounds via the extremely out of bounds, off limits, if you're caught down there you'll be suspended, if your caught down there smoking you'll be a expelled, if your caught down there pashing one of girls from the girl's school, you'll suffer an eternity of infernal damnation creek.

Yeah, I went to an all boys Catholic school that was separated from an all girls Catholic school by a creek that was polluted and infested with water rats as big as cats, hypodermics, and all other unsightly and nasty business. Even as a kid, I saw something poetic and tragi-romantic about our separation by that creek. Many a boy and many a girl feel into that creek.

But I didn't have to cross the creek to get out of school grounds. I just had to make I sure wasn't caught. I'd go past older students who were smoking, drinking, looking at porno mags, past a boys who has their tongues down a girl's throat (or sometimes another boy's-- but then, especially at school- that sort of thing was usually hidden.) his hand either down her top or up her skirt. On occasion, I caught a glimpse of some girl giving some boy a headjob, but only a glimpse. I'd walk past all that to freedom.

Too early too go home, I make my way to the Promised Land, that place of comfort and joy. The place that is cool in summer and warm in winter- the local library. I would pluck a book, any book, from a shelf; sit in this great big comfy chair and begin to read.

Bliss.