I was the kind of kid in junior high school who should have hated dodgeball. I weighed ninety-four pounds. I competed on the math team and had the awkward personality to match. Dorky glasses? Check. Bad haircut? You can't imagine.

My parents noticed early that they were raising a bookworm and tried to balance the scales by putting me in every sports program they could think of: T-ball, Little League baseball, hockey, soccer, tennis, and YMCA basketball. They yelled at me to get out of the house when I lounged on the couch with a book on summer afternoons and supported me when I started running road races at age 9.

When I was in fourth grade, the school district ran a program called "Read a Million Minutes." We kids kept track of how many minutes we read each day, and after a couple of weeks we added all the minutes up so the district could brag about how they were making reading cool. At the beginning of the program, all the kids turned in their individual reading goals. Soon after I turned in my reading goal, my teacher -- a bitter-faced woman named Ms. Ruen -- called my mother and asked her to stop by for a conference.

"Mrs. Trout," said Ms. Ruen, "the reason I called you in today is that I'm worried about Kilgore. You see, all of the children turned in their reading goals Monday, and I had expected that Kilgore would set the highest goal. But he didn't. I'm hoping that you can help Kilgore to set a goal more in line with his potential."

My mother normally avoided confrontation, but she would not stand for this.

"Kilgore reads enough," she said. "Kilgore has books in his room, and books in the bathroom, and piles of books on the couch, and more books at the top of the stairs, and he brings more books home from the library every weekend, and it's springtime, and KILGORE HAS TO PLAY BASEBALL."

This strategy worked, sort of. I won some grudging acceptance from the other kids in seventh grade when I set the school record for the mile run (5:24.32, if you care to take a crack at it this weekend). I remember one track practice where the shot-putter told me, "Trout, you'd really be a nerd if you couldn't run." That was the nicest thing anyone ever said to me at John Adams Middle School.

Anyway. Shy, bookish kids like me usually grow up paying thousands of dollars to therapists to exorcise harrowing memories of the big kids hurling red rubber playground balls. But I loved dodgeball. I would stand about twelve feet away from a guy holding a ball -- even Chad Weaver, the biggest guy in school -- and dare him to take me out. I stood stooped over to give a smaller target, arms hanging down, hoping he would throw at my torso so I could bring my hands up and trap it against my chest. This catch had to be timed perfectly lest the ball bounce off my chest and back through my arms, sending me to Jail until the guy who tagged me got tagged himself. Sometimes guys would throw at my feet, but I hopped over those rather than risk the hands-only catch. On a throw to the side, I might try to pop the ball in the air like a volleyball and then make the second-chance catch.

Man, dodgeball was awesome. Who's ready to play?

+posted by Lawrence @ 5/28/2004 02:22:00 PM