Page 86 - MN

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I hit the wall on a cruise ship out of Hong Kong. I was working a long contract on the ship, maybe two months, and in the middle of it was a charter with 700 Hong Kong Chinese people. I was useless as a comedian (my Chinese is nonexistent) so I basically had the week off and I played ping pong. I got hammered. Little Chinese grandmothers were beating the hell out of me. Apparently ping pong is a big deal in China.
I played little league baseball and was a complete bust, except for one play. For some reason I was at shortstop and a kid hit a line drive right at me. I put up my glove to protect my face and the ball hit it and stuck. I had made a catch! I don't know who was more stunned, me or the coach.
I know my dad wanted me to help me be an athlete and we played catch on the front lawn. Again, good memories. But he also wanted to toughen me up so we had boxing gloves. All I remember about that is the time he hit me in the nose and I ran crying to my mom. Mike Tyson was safe.
I played center on the junior high football team and that was a good place for me. I could hike the ball and then just get buried in the line play, trying to block where no one could see me. You know those football blooper reels where the center gets the count wrong and the whole team is running the play while he holds onto the ball? I did that. I could've sworn the quarterback said hike it on five. Ten other guys knew it was one. All I know is that I was holding the ball and all my teammates were running around swearing.
In my day there was a lot of pressure to be a man, so after painful soul searching I decided to go out for high school football. Ours was a very small high school and if you were a guy and you didn't go out for football, you were pretty much gay. Now? No big deal. Back then? It was a big deal.
Football practice had already started, so I gathered up my courage one evening and pedaled my bike over to the coach's house to ask if I could try out for the team. It was a huge, earth-shaking moment for me, but he seemed kind of surprised I was there and said, "Sure".
I lasted three days. It ended the day we had head-on tackling practice where one guy had the ball and ran at the guy who was supposed to tackle him. Every school has a Jim Fisher. Jim Fisher is the guy who's flunked a couple of grades and works at the gas station. He's big and tough. That's who I drew and he laid me out cold. My football career halted on the spot. No Mas.
I did play basketball and eventually made the varsity team as the sixth man on a really good five-man team. In those days none of us knew that players like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird would shoot 700 jump shots a day. I was just good enough to make the team but not good enough to date a cheerleader.