expected me to blow my whistle and force them all to start pumping out push-ups.
“We brought you some visual inspiration,” Floyd said, whipping out his iPad cued up to a YouTube video.
“That’s Dude, Nice Shot,” one of the kids said as they all crowded in closer.
The class watched as four grown adults set up what was essentially a beer pong shot from an upper level running track down onto a Ping-Pong table at center court.
A collective “whoa” arose when they successfully made the shot.
“You guys will be evaluated on the difficulty of the shot, teamwork, and your victory dance. Extra credit for a successful shot,” I explained.
“I call Milton for my team,” one of the boys soccer team stars shouted.
“Nice try, Danny. Mr. Wilson and I have already divided you all up into teams.” Diverse teams from all social backgrounds. Take that, punks.
We split the kids up and sent them off to their respective tables. We’d found five in the bowels of the storage room and had done our best to dust them off. The kids were already deep in conversation over strategy.
Damn if I wasn’t getting excited just seeing them get excited. Jake was onto something when it came to relevancy and involvement. The beauty of Dude, Nice Shot was no one needed to be an athlete. In fact, it was better to be smart than physically strong. Everyone could participate.
“Cicero, this is fucking genius,” Floyd said as we watched the teams launch into a thorough examination of the props we’d provided, including red Solo cups procured from Mrs. Gurgevich’s desk drawer.
“You know,” I said, nudging him with my elbow. “There’s one Ping-Pong table left.”
“Oh, I’m picking up what you’re putting down.”
I wasn’t going to lie. Watching several of Culpepper’s high school star athletes and general popular population lift the scrawny Marvin Holtzapple on their shoulders to celebrate the physic geek’s Rube Goldberg-style trick shot got me a little verklempt.
“That was fucking beautiful, Cicero,” Floyd said, mopping at the corners of his eyes with his sweatshirt sleeve when the kids cleared the gym.
“Yeah, it wasn’t bad,” I sniffled. For a brief, shining moment, an idea I had lifted the misery of unpopularity for a student who probably dreaded school as much as I had back in the day. I felt like a goddamn hero.
“We need to do more of this,” Floyd decided. “Gym class should be inclusive. Even the pregnant girls can participate in shit like this.”
“You’d be open to something besides volleyball?” I teased. Floyd’s hatred of spending five months of the school year watching bored kids play boring v-ball badly was legendary. The Pennsylvania winters were long and annoying, but budgets didn’t exactly allow for a ton of athletic equipment. So our options for the cold weather months were limited.
“This was the most fun I’ve had in a class since Lindsay P. pegged one of the Hostetter twins in the nuts with a lacrosse ball.”
I laughed and headed into the locker room, a few ideas rippling beneath the surface.
The high of doing something good and being actually liked within the walls of a high school stayed with me into lunch.
“Gimme gimme!” Andrea wiggled her fingers when I poked my head into the guidance office. “I’m starving,” she exclaimed.
“I hope you like horseradish,” I said, unpacking the two roast beef melts I’d packed this morning.
“As long as it’s not made out of actual horse, I’m sure I’ll love it,” she insisted. Her red mermaid-like hair was draped over her shoulder in a long braid. Curls exploded out of it in all directions.
I dropped into my usual chair and popped the top on the sole soda I allowed myself a day. I’d discovered that cutting back on the sugar combined with running was having quite the positive impact on my waistline—as in, I had one now. If I’d known returning home humiliated and getting myself a hot, fake boyfriend was this good for me, I would have tried it years ago.
“How’s your day so far?” I asked, taking a bite of sourdough bread, swiss cheese, tomato, and roast beef.
“Mmm. Mmm.” Andrea rolled her eyes as she chewed quickly. “Not bad. No aggressive parent phone calls or sobbing teenage girls yet today. I heard your day is going well.”
I cocked my head to one side, silently questioning while I chewed.
“Kids are loving the Ping-Pong trick shot thing,” she said.
“Really?” I felt as victorious as I had in third grade when my teacher had given me a literal gold star for