My Olympic Moment

The 1968 Winter Olympics were held in Grenoble, France; I was a sophomore in high school.  The games had some kind of effect on me and my friends; we were forever calling “Gold!  Silver!  Bronze!” after completing one stunt or another.

It had to be a Friday or Saturday night, because my parents didn’t let me go out on school nights.  Not that I would’ve gotten into big trouble with the three guys I hung with.  No, we were the halt, the lame, the painfully shy around all females, just the kind of guys who threw snowballs in the alley on the weekend.

We were either aiming at a sign or the telephone pole it was attached to.  I mean, this was serious stuff, an imaginary medal going to the first three of us who could hit the target.  (Maybe this made us back-alley biathletes in boots, no skis or guns.)  We kept firing away, oblivious to the cold or the dark or the sad appearance we must’ve presented to anyone who looked out their back window.  Then I did it.

Let me explain here that Chicago alleys put a premium on throwing or hitting a ball straight; anything else risks going into a yard, where the neighbor may have locked the gate to keep out kids or keeps a hatchet at the ready to take care of any balls that land on perfectly cut grass; there was actually a guy on our block who did that, throwing back a rubber ball in quarters or eighths to the owner.  Twice, errant throws got me into trouble.  When I should’ve thrown straight, I went crooked, and, when I should’ve gone crooked, I went straight.        

Around the time I was in sixth grade, I hurled an empty aspirin bottle as far as I could, only it ended up going through a neighbor’s back-porch window; my weekly allowance went to paying off the cost of replacing said window, oh, for about the next five years, or so it felt.  And on that night in February 1968 with my friends, a snowball that should’ve veered left or right instead went straight down the alley to the junction of the “T” (most Chicago blocks have alleys with long and short sections that form the letter T), slamming into a passing car full of less than pleasant people, one of whom got out to dismember me.

My friends being pragmatists, they took a pass on doing the Spartacus thing; I stood alone, ready to meet my fate.  Then, at the last second one of the thugs recognized Matt, brother of Pete; thug and Pete were on good terms, so thug and Matt were on good terms, so I lived.

And that was how I won a gold medal in survival one winter’s night long ago.