When I was growing up, high school started in 10th grade, and instead of middle school, you went to Junior High School through 9th grade, except not in that order. My junior high school was called Sunset Park. I'm not familiar with any other towns where the term "Sunset Park" is considered upscale, and my hometown was no exception. Sunset Park was kind of rundown, smelly, moldy and downright scary. One of the more curious features of the school was its pitiful 8:10 scale gymnasium (meaning the basketball gym was about 80% the size of a normal gym). What made it downright comical was the 1-foot "buffer" between the edge of the court and the exterior brick wall of the building. There was absolutely no room outside of the court for coaches, benched players, benches for them to sit on, and most of all there was no room for stopping.

This tiny gym did make for some really fun indoor kickball games. I was fairly good at kickball (until the bouncy pitch was outlawed), and had no shame in "toeing" the ball. I played on the soccer team (goalie) where I was taught to kick the ball with the instep/top of your foot for more control. But the bone-crushing impact I could inflict upon those voluptuous red kick balls with the toe of my foot was just too much to resist.

Now add into the mix the miniature gymnasium we would play in during the hot months- there were no out of bounds, the ricochets were magic, and the junior high level attempts at kickball defense were absolute hilarity when the ball could come at you from any direction at Collegiate level velocity. Yes, it was absolute hilarity, except when the ricochet entered a 5-foot radius around a kid named Shooney.

At Sunset Park, we got what seemed to be all the troublesome kids who were too much for the other schools to handle. I’m not sure if Shooney was a transfer, or if he just happened into Sunset Park via good luck, but either way, he had a reputation of not turning his spelling contracts in on time, and also attempted murder. The attempted murder charge evidently escaped my mind one hot day in May when we had a spirited game of kickball going.

Shooney, like most of the other ne'er-do-wells at my school,  ne'er “dressed out” for gym, opting to wear his street clothes in and out of the locker room, something which apparently cost you .25 points on your final grade. Not participating in class would cost you a whole point so he would just stand wherever, doing the least amount of movement or exercise possible. I can’t quite remember why, but Shooney and I had some bad blood between us. Everyone knew it, and I just tried to ignore it during that once-a-day gym class we had together. But for some reason during this particular kickball game, I decided to see if I could make him move. I decided I would kick the ball near him, or kind of sort of “at him”.

The pitch came to me, and rather than doing a controlled, traditional soccer instep kick toward an industrial fan in the upper ceiling, I lost my mind temporarily and toed a 90mph fastball. Now you normally have to grow your Afro out pretty good to get any kind of body or bounce to it, but the ball passed so close to his head that even his fairly short Afro temporarily either parted or undulated from the wind, I can’t quite remember which.

I’m not convinced I would have been better off had the ball not struck him, but either way, it had entered his sphere of inactivity and he was obviously very unhappy about it. The other classmates whooped and hollered and cajoled him to respond, but he stood his ground and said to me a few times, “Locker-room…. Locker-room….” Meaning of course, locker room is where I will attempted murder you in the next place we are together where there are no teachers around.

I was terrified and thought I would just skip the locker room and face the ridicule of wearing my gym clothes the rest of the day (not a hygiene issue by the way- my sweat is odorless, almost sweet). But then I remembered my trombone was in the locker room, as the class directly after gym was band and I had to have my trombone. Oh well, I thought… How bad could it be? I play the trombone. I’m obviously bad-ass.

It could be worse, I found at the next time I got up at bat and kicked the ball squarely away from Shooney. The magic ricochet had its way with me, however, and the ball clearly crossed his sphere of inactivity as it brushed across his shoulder, causing even more cajoling from the class.

When we finally got to the locker room, Shooney stormed in and took his shirt off, a symbolic gesture at Sunset Park Junior High School which meant “Let’s fight” (other related gestures included “Whoops I spilled ketchup on your Member’s Only jacket” and “Whoops I bumped into your chair as I was sitting down to eat lunch in the cafeteria”).

Now the only thing I was more scared of than Shooney was my dad, who besides being 5’7” (seemed tall at the time I guess) was a former cryptographer in the Air Force and could probably kill me in several ways I couldn’t understand. I was terrified of my dad… I had never gotten in trouble at school, and if I was caught fighting, I could get suspended, something I was sure my father would attempted murder me successfully for. So I stood there as the boys were yelling and Shooney hit me squarely in the face 4 or 5 times saying “Come on! Fight! Come on!” I just stood my ground, refusing to give in to the siren song of violence, knowing my dad would make me pay for it with death. The class change bell eventually rang and Shooney gave up on getting a good fight out of me. Editor’s Note: Maready’s dad later found out about this incident and chastised his son for not fighting, a fact which explains Maready’s current fascination with Ultimate Fighter, TapOut, and anything else Mixed Martial Arts related).

The whole point of this story: Whenever I am down, whenever I am feeling blue, my earth wife will try and console me by saying something like, come on Maready, everybody loves you. To which I will say, "Shooney doesn't love me." And then she’ll say, “Shooney loves you now”, knowing full well that it is a lie. Shooney at one time didn't love me, and I haven't seen him in a long, long time, but unless my survival instincts are wrong, Shooney still doesn't love me and I’ll save the kickball for the neighborhood kids.