Sports Briefs: A Good Friday

My sister and I have both grown up, neither of us live at home, Dad is watching from Heaven, and I don't even think they make football ribbons any more. But if I could relive just one Friday from my childhood, here is what would happen:

7:20 a.m. -- Dad enters my bedroom. Turns on lamp. Wakes me up.

7:21 -- Fall back asleep.

7:23 -- Dad and Mom enter room. Turn on ceiling light. Strike a match to my sheets. Wake me up.

7:32 -- Eat a cinnamon roll the size of my face. The kind that has more glaze on it than every eye in World History class combined. Mom always took me and my sister by the Sweet Shoppe on Thursday afternoons to buy donuts and cinnamon rolls for our Friday breakfasts. Compared to soggy Frankenberry--a typical Monday through Thursday breakfast--orange juice, a cinnamon roll and a Smurf vitamin were considered special.

7:44 -- Brush teeth and forget to use Scope. And not give a flip about forgetting, since I am only in elementary school.

7:55 -- Arrive at school and go by the place where the cheerleaders are selling ribbons. Before every game throughout the season, the cheerleaders would sell ribbons that said something to the effect of, "Trap the Tigers, Olney Cubs" and have a picture of a cartoon tiger getting his tail amputated. The guys would wear their ribbons pinned to their jeans. The girls wore them on their cheerleading vests. And I would carefully place my ribbon in my backpack, making sure not to get it wrinkled, so I could take it home and keep it in a specially designated place with all the rest of my unbent ribbons from previous weeks.

8:00-11:30 -- Sit through math class, history class and English class. Don't learn nothing.

11:35 -- Arrive home for a hot meal, freshly prepared by my mother, June Cleaver.

11:40 -- Back at school. Elementary-aged students were supposed to eat fast.

11:42-12:30 p.m. -- Recess. Tackle football. All the talented boys against all the untalented boys.