“
how we’d break into teams,
huddle around whomever was chosen to be qb,
how the qb would extend her left palm, flat,
into the middle of the huddle,
plant the index finger of her right hand in the center of her
palm, and then
with finger motions and whispers,
she would diagram who was to go where and when,
in order to so confuse and fool the other team
that one of us could break free
and go long.
huddle around whomever was chosen to be qb,
how the qb would extend her left palm, flat,
into the middle of the huddle,
plant the index finger of her right hand in the center of her
palm, and then
with finger motions and whispers,
she would diagram who was to go where and when,
in order to so confuse and fool the other team
that one of us could break free
and go long.
- from “If Life Were Like Touch Football” by Julie Cadwallader-Staub.
Garrison Keillor read this poem on Wednesday’s episode of “The Writer’s Almanac.” I nodded when I heard the words “plant the index finger of her right hand in the center of her / palm, and then / with finger motions and whispers.” Because yes: That’s just how it was. And I’d forgotten.
This post is going slowly. I keep interrupting my typing to sketch passing routes.
Go long. And I do.
The feel of fingertip on palm whips me back to 1983, to the big yard behind our house, to the flakey-crispy overused yellow Nerf that somehow still holds a spiral when I fling it toward the spot where Timmy is about to be. It’s not guesswork. We planned it all out.
