Sidelines

    Friday night football game. Turrell Rockets versus Cross County Thunderbirds. We’re two touchdowns ahead, so Coach put in us third stringers to get some experience. The ball is hiked, and nobody blocks me. I take two steps into the backfield. I can see the quarterback as plain as day. I take a half step towards him, thinking I’m about to get my first sack. No. They’re running to my side, pulling their right guard to block me as they sweep in my direction. I’m slow. So very slow. In a blink, the quick, and large, lineman slams into my left thigh and puts me on my back. I heard an incredibly loud “craaack!” and wondered “what the heck was that?” In the next second, I knew: he’d broken my left leg at the knee. I’d gotten my big break in football.

    I wasn’t unconscious, but everything went dark. It was because I was staring up at the night sky. The stadium lights glowed in my peripheral view, but I didn’t really notice them. I was in shock, just a bit. My head rolled back and forth on the grass and all I could say was “Aw shoot” over and over. Shoot has definitely been substituted for the actual word. My Momma reads these things. Next thing I know, our Line Coach, Coach Britton is hovering over me.

    “Stone. Get up, Stone. Shake it off, man. Hey, c’mon Stone. No?”

    “It hurts. My left knee. #@!% it hurts, Coach.”

    Coach Britton calls to the sidelines for our managers to bring the stretcher out. They’ll carry me off the field. I have truly fallen on the field of battle. In the moment, there is no glory. Only pain.

    Speaking of pain, our managers, Ricky (maybe five feet tall) and Malcolm (at least six feet tall) put me on the stretcher and carry me from the field. Their height difference causes me to slant at an angle, and in their rush to get my bulky self off the field, they’re making my broken knee bounce with every step. “Ow! Ow! Ow!” is all that I can say, while the announcer (our school counselor, Mr. Smith) calls out my name and asks the crowd to applaud my brave departure. Yeah, right.

    By the time Ricky and Malcolm got me to the gym, they were exhausted. I was never a skinny kid. My dad was waiting with his truck. He’d been watching in the stands, and when the ambulance hadn’t showed up fast enough for him, he went and got his truck. His boy needed a doctor, and he needed it now. My dad was a man of action. He’d enlisted his friend, who was a jailer for the county and a deputy sheriff and had a blue light on the roof of his car, to run escort for him. Yes, I had a police escort to the hospital. My dad also used to race “C”Cars on dirt racetracks, back in the day, so this was going to be interesting. All my dad said to me was “does it hurt, son?” Before I could get out “not too bad”, we were off like a shot.

    The drive from Turrell to West Memphis, Arkansas is eighteen miles. That’s just a twenty-minute drive. I’m pretty sure we made it in about eight minutes. I’d never gone so fast in my life. The flashing blue light ahead of us warned traffic away, and they even had intersections blocked off for us to blow through. I told my dad “It’s not that bad, dad.” But he just said “We’ll be there in a minute. It’s okay.” He wasn’t kidding. I didn’t know what fast was until that night. The ride raised my adrenaline level higher than the pain even thought about doing.

    It turned out that I’d broken (or had broken for me) the “growth plate” in my left knee. Luckily, I had already reached five feet, ten inches in my sophomore year, so it didn’t affect the length of my leg. I did get to wear a beautiful white, itchy, thigh to toe, plaster cast for about six months. I only stayed in the hospital for one night, and it was raining when I got home. I discovered immediately that rain and bones have a weird relationship. My knee hurt like crazy.

    Mom had stayed home the night of the game. I found out later that, upon being told I’d been hurt at the game and was headed to the hospital, she’d said “what was he doing playing?” Yup. Same thing I said.

    Being a dad myself, I understand a lot more about why my dad took it upon himself to race to the hospital with me. We see our children get hurt and we have to do something. So, he did. There are many other times in their lives that we have no options. We can’t do anything but watch them suffer through whatever pain they’re going through. It gets even worse as they get older. You can only offer so much advice, set so many examples, preach through so many speeches. Then it’s up to them. It’s hard to sit on the sidelines and pray. Sometimes there are rare occasions when you get to rush your boy to the hospital with the speedometer pegged to the right, with blue lights flashing, at lightning speeds. Just because your baby boy is hurt, and you have a chance to help fix him. Thank God for those times. And thank God for my dad, Wayne Stone, for being the kind of man who couldn’t just sit on the sidelines. I understand now. I miss, and love you, Dad. 

God bless y’all.