Guy D. Choate was really popular in high school because of his ability to link actors to Kevin Bacon in six degrees. He's currently working on his MFA at the University of New Orleans.

Don't Put Me In, Coach

By the time the mid-season basketball game with the McCrory Jaguars rolled around, I was used to warming the bench. I sat at the very end next to my lanky friend PJ, whose actual name was Paul Pierre Manuel Neon Deion Edwards, Junior. Neither of us had gotten any playing time in weeks, so we'd resigned ourselves to poking fun at the other team's players. Around the end of the third quarter, PJ and I started to get nervous because our teammates were slaughtering the Jaguars. If we were way up, we knew there was a chance that we were going to have to play, putting our lack of skill on full display in front of the large McCrory crowd and the mercifully small Beebe crowd that had traveled with us. Well, PJ wasn't nervous because he didn't know he sucked. Neither he, nor his dad — who would yell roster suggestions from the bleachers — could understand why he wasn't a starter. Me? I knew I sucked.

It wasn't the first time I had dreaded victory or loathed the sport I was supposed to love. I played quarterback on the Beebe Junior High School football team. Do you remember that kid who played quarterback at your school? He was the one the coach took under his wing because he was smart and dedicated and worked hard and studied the playbook so he knew what everyone on the field was supposed to be doing at all times. The coach trusted him to run the rest of the team through drills until he came out with his whistle to really start practice. He saw him more as a colleague on the field than just another kid in a helmet. He stayed after practice to watch game film a second time, but also just to hang out with the coach because the quarterback needed that father figure in his life and everyone knew it. Get the picture?

I absolutely was not that kind of quarterback. Coaches terrified me. You're thinking of Eddie Thomason. I prayed every day to every god I'd ever heard of that they would protect Eddie from injury. Because if Eddie got hurt, I was up. I was the backup quarterback. My only role under center was to command the second string offense so that the first string defense could practice tackling us. It was less like they were getting practice, though, than just building confidence, because my offensive line, my only protection from the strongest guys I knew, hardly put up any resistance at all.

"Listen up," the coach would grab me by my face mask and pull me in close: "67, jackrabbit left, nine."

I would nod that I understood the play and then run to deliver the message to the huddle of kids in ill-fitting helmets and shoulder pads. They would listen intently to what I had to say, as if I was about to impart that cheat code that would give us invincibility for the next 90 seconds.

"All right guys, 67, jackrabbit left, nine — what does that mean?"

Everyone gave me their best theories and let me make a decision. Usually that decision was that I needed to get rid of the ball as soon as possible. Not once did I ever morph the coach's play into a quarterback sneak or something that might put me in danger.

"Here's the plan — T.J.'s going to snap the ball to me, I'm going to turn and give the ball to Ray, and Ray's going to run like mad to the left. Everybody else block." The way I told it in the huddle made it sound like we were a bunch of middle-schoolers playing a pick-up game at recess. I may as well have told one of them to run to the monkey bars and turn around so I could throw him the ball before the pass rushers counted to five Mississippi.

We lined up, snapped the ball, and before I could turn to give it to Ray, I'd be leveled by a kid twice as big as me. It happened every time, and I thanked God, because that way the coach never became aware I didn't actually know even one play in the book he'd sent home with me to study a few months back. He didn't know that I had no clue what was meant by the series of numbers and words he whispered to me on the sideline. Or maybe he did know and was satisfied with giving me random names of plays that didn't exist and then watch as I tried pathetically to improvise. Either way, I hated practice more and more every day. I also hated everything about the actual games. (That's not true. Following an away game victory, I really liked singing songs together in our manliest voices on the bus ride home. That was fun.)

"Today's the day, Choate," my friend Rory said to me.

"I'll do it, if you do it," I told him, "I promise."

We stood beside each other in full pads just as we did every day, sweating it out on the sidelines of the practice field as we tried to talk each other into quitting the team. But neither of us could muster the courage because we weren't sure what would happen to us if we did. In our small Arkansas town, if you didn't play football, you were nothing. And I don't just mean it hurt your social status at school, I mean that you also lost respect from the community. All of my dad's best high school stories were from the Beebe Badgers football games he and his friends played in. Each story told of a tightly knit group of rebellious teenagers who represented our city against the bastard sons of neighboring towns like Lonoke or Batesville or Bald Knob.

But months after the football season had ended and school was coming to a close, I was given a choice. Go to the high school field house if I you want to play football next year, or to gym if you want to play basketball. Instead of having to wander into the coach's office to quit, all I had to do was not show up next year. I might never have to don a football helmet again. Never again would I be subjected to what the coach aptly called "The Gauntlet" or more simply, the drill he called "Hit."

Without thinking of the consequences, I walked to the basketball gym. When I got there, I was relieved to find Will, a cousin in the grade ahead of me. We pledged solidarity to each other, assuring ourselves that we had made the right decision and that our parents wouldn't kill us for not playing football.

"I need to concentrate on my basketball game," Will said.

"Yeah, me too," I agreed.

But Will was good at basketball; I wasn't, no matter how much I concentrated. Once, a teammate threw me an in-bounds pass, and I could see a clear path to the goal. It was a roller coaster thinking that I had a breakaway layup and then realizing my own bench was laughing at me when the whistle was blown for my backcourt violation. The reason there was a clear path to the goal was because it wasn't my goal. There were other challenges: I couldn't dribble with my left hand. I couldn't dribble well with my right. I couldn't jump very high. I couldn't shoot very well. And when I found myself alone in the paint while the opponent was driving to the goal, I would always somehow manage to get a foul called on me and give up the basket.

This was the scene I'd hoped to avoid in the basketball game against McCrory where PJ and I sat on the bench. The third quarter came to a close, our victory was inevitable, and Coach Hill did indeed give us the nod to enter the game. After a short, obligatory pep talk he released us from our huddle to go one-on-one with our opponents. We knew that we were up against a squad of basketball players who were probably also entering the game for the first time in weeks. I looked toward our opponent's bench with great anticipation to see whom the Jaguar was to my Badger. Who was going to set up on the wing against me? All I wanted was equivalence. I was quite willing to sacrifice my shot at stardom. All I asked in return was someone who wouldn't want to make a joke of me. I knew that what we did out there wouldn't matter to anyone but us, as long as we didn't embarrass ourselves. I had no illusions of maybe playing in the NBA one day. Playing basketball was just a prison sentence to me, a block of time that had to pass before I could be released from the confinement of team-sport hell. Just let me do my time and be discharged honorably so I could salvage what respect I still had in the community after forsaking the religion of football.

When I saw the man I was supposed to guard, I felt a tremendous relief. He was shorter than me. He was smaller than me. It was even obvious as he jogged over from his team's bench in his black and orange uniform that he was clumsier than me. In fact, he was developmentally disabled.

There was no way anyone was going to pass the ball to him. And I was prepared to live up to my end of the bargain by not trying to run all over him.

"How's it goin'?" I said politely as he took his position. I held out my hand to give a gentlemanly low-five, but he left me hanging and didn't say a word. His eyes shifted when I spoke, so I knew he had heard me. Then he gave me a serious look. A really serious look. And I'll admit, I got a little scared. This kid was going to try everything in his power to embarrass me, and he wasn't pretending otherwise.

It didn't matter at first, though, because we just ran up and down the court from end to end. Every time I could tell that a teammate was looking to pass me the ball, I pretended not to notice and threw up a screen so someone else could get open. I must have looked like the most unselfish player on the floor in my attempt to spend the entirety of my playing time without touching the rock, as they say.

But for all my effort to avoid the ball when we Badgers were on the offensive, my counterpart tried twice as hard to get his hands on it. I did my best to play the passing lane between him and the ball, but with just minutes left in the game, a Jaguar point guard dribbled straight toward him, and there was nothing I could do to prevent my man from grabbing a handoff, like a running back relieving a quarterback of the ball.

The crowd began cheering louder now, and I could hear the upperclassmen on our bench yelling at me to guard my man tight. And since they were the ones who'd won the game for us, I figured I owed them that, even if they were being a little sarcastic. My opponent stood there with the ball for a couple of seconds, and then he took about nine steps to my left without dribbling. Excellent! Surely he'd be called for traveling, and I'd be out of this mess. But the referee never blew the whistle, and the guy kept running toward the goal. That's when I realized that the rest of his team had cleared out of the paint, pitting him against me — one on one. I thought about how many times my opponent had driven on me and how many times I had fouled him as he made an easy layup. Coach Hill would always tell me to stand my ground instead of trying to get out of the way. Now, here I was again, looking down the barrel of likely humiliation.

My opponent tucked the ball, ducked his head and charged the goal, only making a minimal effort to run around me, rather than through me. I backpedaled, easily staying ahead of his clumsy legs while also giving him plenty of room should he decide to — I don't know — dribble. I was not going to foul him. All I wanted to do was stay in front him, keeping him from the basket. I knew that was what I was supposed to do. I could see my coach in my head, telling me to hold my ground. But, this seemed like different circumstances. The guy gave head fakes that even I didn't fall for.

I found myself in a tough spot and I wasn't sure what to do. I'd been trained to guard the basket, keep my opponent from throwing the ball into the goal. However, at no point in practicing every day after school had we addressed the ethics of how to guard a kid with developmental disabilities who is driving on you. It dawns on me that this is a lose-lose situation. If I keep this kid from taking a shot, I'm an asshole, insensitive to the core. And everyone in the gym would know it. But, if I let him take the shot, and he makes it, I never live down being the guy who got schooled on the court by the disabled kid. My athletic abilities were already in question, and I was trying to run the figurative "bases" with my new cheerleader girlfriend. She stood holding her pom-poms at the end of the court, watching me. I couldn't really afford any embarrassment.

I didn't know what I was going to do even as my awkwardly unstable opponent pulled the ball with both hands from his chest and thrust it toward the goal with everything he had. I tried not to think about how this was going to hurt my reputation. I tried to think instead about how my girlfriend would think I was the sweetest guy in the world for letting the kid score. How everyone else on the cheerleading squad would wish they had a boyfriend as sensitive as me. Nobody would tease me in the halls of my high school for giving up a layup to a developmentally disabled kid who was at least a foot shorter than me. Would they?

Yes they would. I knew that for sure. So, I packed his shit. I'm an asshole. It was a real dick move. Both referees immediately blew their respective whistles, calling a foul on me — even though I know I got all ball. The bleachers erupted with anger. Even my teammates booed me. The nearest referee shot me a look as if I'd just propositioned his daughter. I noticed my dad in the bleachers, dropping his head into his hands a little.

Coach Hill was pissed. As Paul Pierre Manuel Neon Deion Edwards, Junior, and the rest of the C-squad lined up at the free throw line, I was told to go back to the bench. At that point, I realized it was about time that I start concentrating on my tennis game.