He Is My Walt Whitman

August: Accident

Chapter 1

I’m moving forwards, backwards, sideways, stepping all over our field, with my arms up, fingers spread-out, attempting to catch the football that's flying at me too fast. With his right arm still cocked, my dad yells “You-got-it. You-got-it! You-Got-This-One. . . .” to me. My sister Sandy’s hunkered down a few feet behind him and my brother Buddy’s trotting over from our house. I imagine him as a sloth on the run. The thought, hilarious to me, distracts me, and I blame it for the ball shooting through my hands and smacking the grass.

“It’s O-K!” my dad reassures me. I think he’s way too kind, considerate, patient, etc. I’m thirteen and I’ve tried for years to make at least two to three catches during our team practices for the Family Thanksgiving Day Football Game, but each time I still barely get one in my hands securely. Sandy, who is eighteen, and Buddy, who is sixteen, are both athletes. My dad played running back, Buddy’s position now, on the Northview High School football team, and Sandy has always taken dance lessons. The most amount of sympathy for my lack of athletic talent on the field runs from greatest to least in the order of Dad, Sandy, then Buddy. Our mom prefers to be our (one) spectator, but she’d be a welcomed member if she decided to join us, since she was on the high school track team.

“Mom’s got dinner on the table!” Buddy shouts as he moves through the ankle-high, robustly-green grass. His slow stride indicates to us his lack of enthusiasm for dinner tonight. Mom’s dinners: something not always worth running home for. In high school she became well-recognized for her talent for setting off the fire alarm in “Home-EC” class, not for her track times. From what my dad says, this became a strategy that she and her classmates used when they wanted to waste time before the next class in which they had a test.

“Almost,” says Sandy, patting me on my back.

“Thanks,” I say.