12. Screaming From The Pyre, Chapter X. The Roughest Game of All

The Roughest Game of All:

Quite by accident, I discovered the roughest game two teams of people can play. It's not American football or English rugby, nor water polo. Until the moment that my bent and twisted body was sent crashing into one of those metal poles that rise up in school yards to hold the chain link fence, I thought the roughest and toughest game anyone could play was school yard basketball pickup games.

I am speaking of the inner city variety, here. That's where young people, many of whom had dropped out of school, years earlier, play, by street rules, that is, no guns or knives on the court. Further, players who have fallen onto the court may not be kicked or otherwise beaten. It is, after all, just a game. Overt violence for the sake of violence is frowned upon by these, the toughest of the neighborhood youth. Everything else in this refereeless game: elbows to the head, hard slaps to the face and head, kicks and punches to the body and knees to the groin (all accidental of course) are all cool. Young people in the realms of the inner city play this game for money, therefore they take it quite seriously. Thereto, there is always the dream that a scout for a professional team may be watching.

Anybody, even someone wearing a Rolex, can walk through the toughest of neighborhoods, in America, in relative safety as long as he/she has a basketball under his/her arm and Converse hightops on their feet. To interfere with this person's passage is socially unacceptable. After all, this stranger might mean some easy chump money for one of the strongest, meanest and toughest guy on the block. The game is the thing, such as it is. Call it one of the most elegant, yet legal, forms of violence in contemporary society, today.

But after what I was involved in, recently, school yard basketball has to take an uncomfortable second place to school yard soccer. Forget what ever conception you have of European soccer players prancing around in their brightly colored nylon jerseys. Erase from your mind the images of men jumping, kissing and hugging each other after scoring a goal. Even those fellows referred to as "Football Hooligans," whose function is to supply the only real action in those low scoring contests are no more than painted dandies who would no more step into a school yard soccer game than an Ivy League philosophy student would wrestle sharks.

Imagine the same inner city school yard. Take away the extra space between the foul line and the fence (space is at a premium, here). In the States, that extra space is where friends, onlookers and extra players sit and wait their turn to play. In Eastern Europe, all the space enclosed by the chain link fence is playing field. The game rules are pretty much the same, both here, and in the States.

As in the States, there are no referees; here, there are no fouls, either. Envision 20 men, -- women seem to think better of their bodies than to jump into one of these games although they would be welcome-- 10 on each side, charging within this enclosed arena. No one looks up for two reasons: one, is that all eyes are on the ball being kicked dribbled and bounced around at a very fast speed.; second, you don't want to look up because what you would see is the sight of ten men charging at you at full speed with no thought of what may happen to you if you collide. Common sense, tells you to not showboat and pass the ball as quickly as you can.

I broke both rules. I tried to artfully dribble the ball into a position to score a goal and I looked up. That's when I forgot that I was the one with the ball. The last thing I remember seeing before sailing through the air, smashing against a metal pole and landing in agonizing, exquisitely excruciating, writhing pain, was the specter of ten charging grizzled and sweaty men-- all eyes on the ball --meeting me (all at the same time) at point zero.

I thought, for a moment, that I had lost a kidney. But, having received a blow to the kidney's earlier in my life, I could compare the level of pain. Eftsoons, (look it up ) I realized that I had just torn the heads of several of my abduces from their anchoring at the hip. The result was, that I have been walking around with a soccer ball under my skin between the crest of the hip and my rib cage. It's tough putting on pants, however, I won't be needing to go across the border in search of a kidney any time soon.

Do you know how they play Ping Pong here.........................?

Szia,
From Budapest