By the time you read this, I will already have received at least two or three texts.
How do I know? Because this is August 12. I always receive texts from a certain group of people on August 12.
We share the same memories of this day, which is inexorably etched in our minds (and, all these years later, perhaps still in our bodies).
The texts will begin with “Remember when …” or “I still …” or “It’s hard to believe …” and will go from there.
We all know August 12 because we can’t forget August 12.
Way back when, August 12 was the day that high school football practice started. And not just one practice – it was the start of two-a-days.
Our group of former team members will text each other on special days during the year – Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter … and August 12. And while the old “war stories” are fun, the bigger part is the bond that still exists all these decades later. It’s not just the former players; a couple of our coaches also join in. (Thankfully none of them are yelling at us to “do it again until we get it right!”)
To be honest, what we went through at the start of summer practice really didn’t resemble football. There was a lot of rolling around in the dew-filled grass, jumping jacks, sprints, getting hit by hand-held padded dummies and more sprints. Every once in a while, an actual football would appear.
Then we’d come back and do it again in the afternoon. Fun times!
You can’t do two-a-days anymore because school has started by now. But even if you could, the authorities would probably be slapping the cuffs on high school coaches for mistreatment of minors.
It was around August 11 when we all realized that maybe we should have gotten in better shape in the previous three months instead of hanging out at the lake or working on our suntan.
Every year on the morning of August 12 in my high school football years, I would walk into the locker room with the same thought college basketball teams have during March Madness — survive and advance. Get through this practice and get one step closer to the finish line.
You could forget about any kind of break from the weather. I actually looked it up — between August 12 and the 29th in my senior year, it rained exactly .04 inches — total.
It was always a tough call whether morning or afternoon practice was more miserable. Morning was sticky and humid; afternoon was Equator Hot. I would stand on the practice field and calculate how long it would take the sun to get behind the nearby nine-story United Gas building. That might drop the temperature from 100 degrees all the way down to 97, huh?
Even worse, if possible, was the smell of mesh practice shirts with dried sweat on them in the locker room. That is an odor I can still smell to this day.
Unless you lived through it, you can’t possibly imagine the dread of waking up on the morning of August 12. There are a lot of things I have feared going through in my lifetime and I can promise you that August 12 is still at the top of the list.
But the dread was only temporary. We didn’t realize it at the time, but those two weeks of hell did so much more than just get us in condition for the upcoming high school football season.
I know that, because I just got another text.
Contact J.J. at JohnJamesMarshall@yahoo.com