Silver Footballs

That Little Voice

A small silver football hung proudly on a chain around my neck.

Since it was the first indication of a boy’s interest in me, I overlooked my need to scrub away the green stain highlighting the chain’s outline and chose to glow in the physical announcement I was noticed by one of the opposite sex.

I felt like a late bloomer, since I was 13 and a half, and many of the girls my age had been wearing a similar adornment for at least six months.

In Littlefield, Texas, a silver football was an unstated understanding the giver of the football and chain was going ‘steady’ with the receiver of the gift.

Going steady when I was in the seventh grade meant the football giver and I would meet between classes at my locker, say hi, and scurry off to the next classroom. We might see each other at lunch, if the giver was brave enough to leave his buddies, weave around the cafeteria tables on his way to put the tray in the dirty dishes bin, stroll past my table and smile, affirming our unspoken commitment.

Those were the days when ‘dating’ didn’t start until I was 16, but I could still display the football even though our conversations consisted of four to six words shared quietly each day.

Oh, those moments of first love. I did cherish this football, carefully removing it to take a nightly bath, then sleeping with it around my neck, and displaying it the next day over my Peter Pan collared blouse.

All was heavenly until football season started. ‘Steady’ and I were both in the band. He was a trombone player, and I was the part-time cymbal banger in the drum section.

As the cymbal player in our junior high school band, I enthusiastically took the position seriously, clanging the cymbals together with gusto, twirling them using as much strength as my small body could muster.

It would have been prudent if I had thought ahead about my musical prowess and tucked the football inside my blouse. After one halftime march a fellow student gasped as she looked at my silver love token and noted I had done some major damage to my ‘going steady’ token.

As I looked down, realization set in: the object of our unspoken relationship was smashed beyond repair, as was our tentative affiliation.

I removed the crushed football with a bit of sadness and a great deal of dread. Will I leave it hanging on his locker with a note? Or hand it to him as we exit band practice? I opted to lie saying I lost it somewhere on the football field during half time.

He was young but astute enough to know an untruth when he heard one. Thus ended the fleeting event highlighting my year in the 7th grade.

This was the first in several damaged relationships with the opposite sex I have suffered in my life, many without the benefit of cymbals to blame.