Chapter 37

Thursday, June 7

You say it’s your birthday

It’s my birthday too, yeah

They say it’s your birthday

We’re gonna have a good time

I’m glad it’s your birthday

Happy birthday to you

I was eager to get going as Thursday morning rolled around. I wasted no time getting ready for the day and was at the breakfast table working on a bowl of cereal when my parents walked in.

“Happy Birthday, Sport,” Dad said in greeting.

“Happy Birthday, Honey,” Mom said as she came in trying to get an earring fastened.

“Thanks,” I said. “Now Mom can regale the office staff with tales of spending 36 hours in labor to bring me into this world.”

“That was Kacie,” Mom said. “You were the easy one, only 14 hours.”

“Yeah,” Dad said as he filled his coffee mug. “Your mother wanted to have a natural childbirth — no makeup, no jewelry.”

That earned him the obligatory smack on the arm from Mom, who then put four more servings of pineapple juice on the table. I could have sworn that by now we’d already gone through the few cans Kacie had procured.

My sister picked that moment to come in and give me her birthday greetings.

“Happy Birthday, Bro! Morgan wanted me to give you this,” she said, smacking me wetly on the cheek.

At least it wasn’t something like the last gift my sister had passed along from Morgan. I’m pretty sure that would have earned Mom’s disapproval.

“Thanks, Kace,” I said, surreptitiously running a hand down the back of her leg.

“I thought we should have dinner at the club as a family to celebrate,” Mom said. “We haven’t done that in a while.”

“It’ll have to be later in the evening,” I said. “I have weight training with Jed and the guys at 7. I’ll have to take some clothes and shower at the Activity Center.”

“Let’s make it 8 then,” Mom said. “You should invite Morgan. I’ll tell Jean it’s OK. We can do presents after dinner.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said, looking at my phone. “I’ve got to go. We’re supposed to do our running in 20 minutes.”

With that, I was out the door and down the road. I arrived at the driving range right at 7:50 and began stretching. Jed and two other boys, both of them obviously too small to be linemen, were talking to Coach Tucker and another gentleman dressed up like a member of our coaching staff. The whole group came over as we prepared to run our gassers. Jed made the introductions.

“This is Coach Ramirez, our special teams coach,” Jed said. “These two guys are Fabrice Buluwanayo and Jeremy Porter. They’re going to be our kickers this year. They’re also the two guys who are starting on the cabana crew tomorrow.”

As I shook hands with the newcomers, Coach Tucker explained what he wanted.

“Let’s see how you do getting the ball down with a live kicker,” he said. “It’s all about the timing. They can’t wait for you to have everything in place before they make their approach. They’ll be taking their first step as soon as Jed snaps the ball.”

Coach Tucker went back to hitting range balls, leaving Coach Ramirez to “observe” as we ran our gassers. The two kickers were obviously the fastest in the bunch, while I struggled to keep up with the slowest linemen.

Jed filled me in a little on the new guys as we caught our breath.

“They’re both soccer players and Coach Ramirez is also the boys soccer coach,” he said. “The guys play pretty much year-round with club teams, so they’re going to be in shape. Fabrice is a striker and Jeremy is a goal keeper. He’s also been our punter the last two years.

“They’ll be competing this fall to see who handles extra points and field goals and kickoffs. Knowing Coach Ramirez, they’ll both do everything to start out.”

Coach Tucker returned as we lined up for snaps.

“I know it’s difficult not having goal posts to aim for,” he told the kickers. “Just kick it straight over Jed’s butt. We’ll worry about kicking at an angle from the hash marks when practice starts in August.”

David and Willie’s oldest little brothers, the kids who were already almost as big as me before even starting junior high, were assigned to shag balls. Coach Ramirez had brought a bag of eight footballs from his pickup while we were running, so we could zip through this just as fast as everyone could reset.

Fabrice, who claimed proficiency with either foot because of his soccer background, kicked right-footed. The first time his leg went swinging by my nose nearly caused me to quit then and there.

“It does take some getting used to,” Coach Ramirez said. “You’ve got to learn to block that kind of thing from your mind. You’ll have a lot of things going on in a game situation. Your job is to catch the ball and get it on the tee as quickly as possible.”

We lined up and did it again. As I’ve said before, it was one of those things that gets easier the more you do it.

After about 20 attempts with Fabrice, I turned around and took snaps with Jeremy kicking left-footed. This was more difficult as my hands had to reverse roles, guiding the ball down with the opposite motion of what I’d done for Fabrice. It took a couple of tries to get a finger tip on top of the ball without getting a hand kicked. That in itself was enough motivation to improve.

Jeremy then took a few punt snaps as the coaches gave me their thoughts.

“Not a bad start, really,” Coach Tucker said. “Not game ready, but none of the other parts of the team are, either, and we’ve got 12 weeks before we play. I know there’s a lot to get used to, but just keep at it. I’ve already seen progress with you and Jeremy in just a few minutes today.”

Coach Ramirez had one last bit of advice.

“You need to learn to feel the laces without really thinking about it,” he said. “If you can feel them with your front hand, all you have to do is get the ball down on the tee. If you don’t feel them or feel them with your back hand, you need to give the ball a little spin. Even a quarter turn can make a difference.

“Just like with everything else, it gets easier with repetition.

The now 18 members of the cabana crew huddled up, shouted “TEAM!” on three and dispersed. Chuck, David, Lloyd and I all headed to the Activity Center to begin our shift with Arturo tagging along to help his family.

We showered and changed into work clothes before heading to the stockroom. The four of us quickly fell into the same roles we’d had the day before and got to work.

“We need to clear space along this wall,” Mr. Alvarez said as we sorted the morning’s delivery. “We’ll be getting larger deliveries the next two days to help get us through the weekend and need to be able to just wheel it in and go. The vendor doesn’t deliver on Sundays.”

I made the rounds of the cabanas to collect restocking requests, again finding condoms on the list, this time from a different cabana and in a different handwriting than last. I guess someone was planning for a big weekend.

I passed the request along to Mr. Alvarez, who dispatched Chuck to the nearest pharmacy with instruction on what kind and how many to buy. I wondered what must go through the cashier’s mind when some teenager came to the counter with boxes containing several dozen rubbers.

The swimming lessons were in full swing, the moms were enjoying coffee and donuts and the Benavidez women were getting started on another day of carne asada when Mom showed up.