by Steve Moore
I was excited about having fun on a bus trip to another town and hanging out in a hotel and playing a few games. It offers all kinds of opportunity for shenanigans.
But I also was worried. Not only would my Foot-Eye-Dweeb-Itis be on display, but I once had a bad experience on a bus trip to an out-of-town tournament.
Quick Time-Out about That Bus Trip
It was in first grade. I traveled to a Teeny-Weeny Hoops tournament in a town that was a four-hour bus ride away.
The road trip was a blast for the first three hours. We guzzled Gatorade and stuffed our faces with candy and sunflower seeds and pulled all kinds of shenanigans that drove the coaches and chaperones right out of their skulls.
But all the Teeny-Weeny basketball players fell silent during the final hour.
The bus didn’t have a restroom. And the driver was stubborn and cranky. He refused to stop for a break.
That’s a recipe for disaster when there are a bunch of first graders with teeny-weeny bladders on board who have been guzzling Gatorade for three hours.
I averted disaster—barely—by closing my eyes, crossing my legs, and clenching my teeth for the final hour. But others on the bus couldn’t control their faucet. If you know what I mean.
Including Carlos. To this day, he swears the bus hit a bump in the road, which knocked a bottle of lemon Gatorade onto his lap.
When we finally pulled up to the hotel, there was a mad rush of kids with full bladders pushing and shoving to get out the bus door and into a restroom.
I got trampled in the stampede. There was no way I could make it into the hotel and wait in a long line for the restroom. So I took a detour.
I didn’t end up with “lemon Gatorade” on my pants like Carlos and the others. But since then I have avoided out-of-town trips on a bus with no restroom and a driver who is stubborn and cranky.
Coach K dismissed the JV team just as the varsity soccer squad arrived for their practice.
Jimmy Jimerino and his kiss-up posse trotted onto the field like God’s gift to soccer. They loitered at midfield and laughed like hyenas at Jimmy’s worn-out jokes.
Then the best player on the varsity soccer team ran onto the field and started warming up.
It was Becky.
We made eye contact and I tried to smile, but my mouth got stuck.
I gathered up an armload of gear to help out Coach K and I tried to slink away. But Jimmy Jimerino spotted me.
He shouted across the field loud enough for everyone in the town of Goodfellow to hear.
Jimmy’s posse of kiss-ups laughed their hotshot shorts off.
That night at home I gave the parental permission sheet for the out-of-town soccer trip to the Moore family Power Structure.
Dad, of course, signed immediately. He didn’t even read the details. All he knew was that his son would be playing a sport.
Mom, however, examined the permission sheet as if it was a legal contract to sell our house and all of our worldly possessions.
My mom is a turbo-hyper-worrywart, so she sees anything having to do with sports as a possible cause of bodily injury.
And she is a big fan of helmets. Mom is 100 percent certain that a helmet will protect me from any kind of harm in life—like a wild pitch or a direct hit from an asteroid.
Mom knew even less about the game of soccer than I did.
Derp!
Dad had to explain to Mom that there are no helmets in soccer because players hardly ever get their faces smashed into the grass like in football.
CHAPTER 10
On the day of our trip, everyone going to the weekend soccer tournament got to leave school in the middle of their final period. In my case, that was perfect timing.
The varsity and JV teams filed onto the bus. As we boarded, Miss Ekolie, the cafeteria manager, handed out our snack bags. We were all excited until we looked inside the bag.
Kale!
We all knew that Mother T had to be responsible for that dirty trick.
On school trips, my friends and I always try to get seats in the very back of the bus, where we can get away with all kinds of shenanigans.
It never works out that way.
Jimmy Jimerino and his kiss-up posse always push and shove their way past everyone and call dibs on all of the excellent shenanigan seats at the back of the bus.
My friends and I got stuck in the front of the bus in seats next to the JV and varsity coaches.
Becky O’Callahan was the last player to board the bus. She doesn’t care all that much where she sits. But she didn’t get stuck sitting up front next to the coaches because Ricky Schnauzer had saved her a seat next to him.
Ricky Schnauzer!
This was the same guy who got cut from the Spiro baseball team and then hid in a toilet stall because of the shame. Then he decided that playing football for Spiro didn’t exactly fry his burger, so he quit and volunteered as team equipment manager.
But, apparently, Ricky does not suffer from Foot-Eye Dweeb-Itis because he had made the cut for the Spiro varsity soccer team.
Becky walked by me without smiling Nature’s Near-Perfect Smile or even saying hello.
After she passed by, I looked back.
Ricky got up and stood in the aisle. He was wearing a neatly pressed shirt, sport coat, and tie. He motioned for Becky to take the prime window seat.
Wow.
And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, the bus driver got on board. And he looked familiar.
Very familiar.
He was the same stubborn and cranky driver who refused to stop during my Teeny-Weeny basketball trip!
The driver sat down behind the wheel and looked up into the rearview mirror. He stared back at me with an evil, “I’m not gonna stop for a break” grin on his face.
I think he might have even recognized me from first grade.
And I’m not even making that up!
I turned and looked in the back of the bus.
There was no restroom.
Just Jimmy Jimerino and his kiss-up posse sprawled out in the rear seats chugging bottles of Gatorade.
I had a bottle, too, but I had only taken one or two or maybe six gulps.
I quickly stashed it in my carry-on bag. Then I warned Joey and Carlos about the stubborn and cranky driver from Teeny-Weeny Hoops and our bus with no restroom.
Joey didn’t seem too concerned because, for a tiny guy, he has a gigantic bladder.
But Carlos reacted as if he might pass out. I looked on the floor under his seat. There were three—three—empty Gatorade bottles. And we hadn’t even left the parking lot!
I thought about alerting the coaches so they could make an emergency announcement in case anyone wanted to sprint to the restroom one more time before we left, but it was too late.
The stubborn and cranky driver shut the doors. We were trapped.
Our bus with no restroom rolled out of the Spiro T. Agnew parking lot on a four-hour road trip with no possibility of a rest break.
CHAPTER 11
I was sitting in the front of the bus next to the coaches with no possibility of shenanigans. So I slunk down in my seat and tried to make the time pass quickly.
I did the usual road-trip stuff.
I listened to music. I stared out the window at billboards and cattle in pastures slurping up grass and a big rig that had overturned and dumped two tons of broccoli—broccoli—onto the side of the highway.
I shifted in my seat about a million times. And I tried to sleep, but the rigid bus seat kept my neck bent at a painful angle.
Meanwhile, the other players on the bus partied in shenanigans for three hours.
Then they all fell silent.
I felt discomfort in my bladder, but it wasn’t like a major flood was imminent because I had completely cut off my intake of liquids.
But others on the bus weren’t doing so well.
It was the beginning of an epic event that later became known in Spiro T. Agnew folklore as t
he Great Gatorade Bladder Massacre.
Jimmy Jimerino and his kiss-up posse seemed to be especially stressed. There were dozens of empty Gatorade bottles scattered on the floor under their seats.
Bladders from the back of the bus to the front were maxed out. Bulging. But the stubborn, cranky, and apparently evil bus driver kept rolling down the highway.
Occasionally, he’d look up in the rearview mirror and gaze back upon all the weak and useless passengers squirming in their seats.
He had his creepy, “I’m not gonna stop for a break” grin on his face.
Carlos was miserable. He was bent over in his seat with legs double-crossed. If it was humanly possible, I think Carlos would have triple-crossed his legs.
Meanwhile, tiny Joey and his big bladder were doing just fine.
We arrived in the town of Laurensville, where the Laurensville Invitational Soccer Tournament was being held. That’s why they call it the Laurensville . . . Oh, never mind.
The instant the bus stopped and the evil bus driver opened the doors, there was a chaotic dash of passengers out of the bus and into the hotel restrooms.
Jimmy Jimerino charged up the aisle to the front door and knocked over everyone in his path—even members of his kiss-up posse.
Dewey Taylor actually tried to clear a path like a loyal fullback so Jimmy could get out of the bus and into the hotel restroom. But Jimmy plowed right over Dewey just like the others.
Players screamed and whimpered. Dewey tripped on a curb and fell on his face, chipping a front tooth. And a grown woman was so frightened by the stampede that she fainted!
Meanwhile, I had to shake Joey by the shoulders to wake him up—otherwise he would have slept in the bus through the entire weekend soccer tournament.
All through the climax of the Great Gatorade Bladder Massacre, the stubborn and cranky bus driver sat in his seat and watched it unfold with a creepy, “I didn’t stop once” grin on his face.
CHAPTER 12
All the out-of-town soccer teams were staying at the Laurensville Garden Hotel. It was a decent place, with no obvious signs of bedbugs or decay, but there was no actual garden that I could see. Just a few wimpy flower beds.
The first order of business was room assignments, which in most cases were decided days in advance because everyone bunked with their closest friends.
Everyone except Ricky Schnauzer. Ricky reserved a room for himself, probably so that he had enough space for his neatly pressed wardrobe.
Joey, Carlos, and I shared a room, of course. The Three Benchkateers always stick together.
There were only two beds in our room, so we did rock, paper, scissors to decide who would get stuck sleeping on the lumpy couch. It came down to me and Carlos.
After Carlos calmed down and tossed his stuff on the couch, we explored the hotel.
It was crawling with soccer players from the top floor to the bottom floor and everywhere in between—in the elevators and the hallways and the lobby and the pool and the Jacuzzi and the wimpy flower beds.
And wherever we wandered, players from other schools were gossiping about a mysterious player on the Nike Preparatory Academy team who supposedly was the best soccer player his age in the entire universe.
(That last one was my favorite.)
Few people outside of Nike Prep knew the mysterious player’s real name, but his nickname was Thunderfoot.
I met him early the next morning at the Laurensville Garden Hotel’s delicious buffet breakfast. (Not a commercial endorsement!)
I remembered Thunderfoot from football season.
He was the kicker for Nike Prep who once booted a football barefoot out of Spiro’s stadium, over the parking lot and onto Seventh Avenue. It landed on the roof of a police cruiser a block away and almost created a SWAT incident.
And I’m not even making that up.
At breakfast, Thunderfoot was standing barefoot in line ahead of me waiting to get waffles, even though his plate already was piled high with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, and hash browns.
It was early in the morning when ordinary people would be grumpy and puffy-eyed and their breath would smell like a sock that was worn way too many days in a row.
But Thunderfoot is no ordinary person. His eyes were bright and shiny. He turned around and gave me a big smile.
And his breath was fresh and minty.
Quick Time-Out about Thunderfoot
I’m at least 72 percent sure that what I was told about Thunderfoot is the absolute truth.
Joey’s former next-door neighbor has a cousin whose best friend’s stepsister’s friend attends Nike Preparatory Academy. And she says Thunderfoot is a foreign exchange student from Brazil.
He was just a snot-nosed kid in a public school in the city of São Paulo, but Thunderfoot was pretty much a martial-arts soccer wizard with gravity defying moves who had the power to kick a ball barefoot right through the trunk of a tree!
So word of Thunderfoot leaked out, and schools from around the world sent recruiters to São Paulo with offers of full-ride scholarships and soccer glory.
Thunderfoot’s parents chose Nike Preparatory Academy because the school put academics first and sports second. But not just soccer. They wanted him to play more than one sport.
And that’s the 72 percent absolute truth about Thunderfoot.
Later that day, I watched Thunderfoot display his barefoot martial-arts soccer skills.
The Spiro JV team wasn’t scheduled to play until the afternoon, so my friends and I—and practically every other person who was not involved in a game—watched the first-round match between the Nike Prep Platypuses and the Chaney Middle School Werewolves.
Chaney has a reputation as a frightening school. Their players are really mean and kind of hairy. And the meanest, hairiest Werewolves player is nicknamed “Beast.”
He is gigantic and muscular. And smelly. Beast is the dominant player in every sport at Chaney. Except golf.
Nike Prep, meanwhile, is an odd little school that excels in academics. And the Platypuses teams are disciplined and guided by a single motto: “Think positive!”
The Werewolves were favored to maul the competition and pretty much cruise right into the tournament championship.
But they weren’t expecting Thunderfoot.
In the first ten seconds of the match, Thunderfoot scored three times.
He spun around Beast and scored. He darted under Beast and scored. He kicked the ball into the air and leaped up over Beast’s head.
And then, in midair, he kicked the ball into the goal—all the way from midfield!
I lost count, but Nike Prep beat Chaney by probably a hundred to zip.
Beast was not happy.
The legend of Thunderfoot kicked into high gear.
Meanwhile, my struggles with Foot-Eye Dweeb-Itis kicked into higher gear.
CHAPTER 13
The Spiro JV team played in the first round against the tournament hosts—Laurensville Middle School, “Home of the Fighting Pinecones.”
Coach K picked Joey to play center forward because he’s quick as a flea and low to the ground, which gives him maximum ball control.
Carlos still insisted that he should play center forward, but he ended up sitting on the bench as our team’s only substitute. Carlos was not happy.
Coach K. put me in at defender on the left side. She probably hoped that my Foot-Eye Dweeb-Itis wouldn’t do too much damage in that position.
Wrongity, wrong, wrong.
I think the Fighting Pinecones noticed me during warm-ups and detected a slight defect in my ability.
A Pinecones player immediately dribbled the ball my way. I moved in to stop him and steal the ball, but while trying to decide between “kicking and running,” my feet got tangled up and I fell flat on my face. The Pinecones player dribbled around me and scored.
Fighting Pinecones one, Mighty Plumbers zip.
Every time the Pinecones attacked the left side, my feet would go all
dweeb. I could not stop the ball or control the ball or kick the ball.
Good old Joey kept us in the game.
His low center of gravity and flea-like quickness allowed him to dart in and snatch the ball away from the Pinecones. Then he’d streak downfield faster than the human eye can see.
But every time, after Joey scored, I failed to stop a Nike Prep advance. Either my feet would ignore directions from my eyes and I’d trip and stumble, or my hands would ignore a major rule in the game of soccer.
You know the rule. The one about not catching or even touching the ball with your hands or arms. Big, drool-y duh.
Three times—three times—I instinctively reached out and grabbed the ball as if I was playing basketball, football, or baseball.
After each of my stupid mistakes, Nike Prep was awarded a free kick. And two of those kicks resulted in goals.
The score was tied at the halftime break, three goals to three. And all of the Pinecones’ goals were scored because of my Foot-Eye Dweeb-Itis or my soccer rules brain wreck.
We had a ten-minute break. Coach K gave the team an eight-minute pep talk. Then she spent the final two minutes talking to me while the rest of the team sucked on orange slices because it’s a strict rule in soccer that players suck on orange slices during the halftime break.
Coach K sat down next to me and wrapped her arm around my shoulder. Usually, that’s a sure sign that you’re about to get yanked from the game.
I was prepared to resume my usual position on the pine, but I didn’t get benched.
I got relocated.
CHAPTER 14
Coach K compared my situation to what sometimes happens in theater or the movies.
“You were cast in the wrong role.”
