A Random Thought

I was thinking of an old school friend that I probably have not seen in 20 years. His name is Jim Hammond. Not sure why I thought about him, probably because of some fairly memorable encounters we had over the years we were in school together. I guess it goes to show you what kind of impact you can have on a person (good or bad) and not even know it.

I will give you a quick run down of our three encounters. Before I do, you have to know Jim a little bit. He was never a very big guy, but he was tough. He was the youngest of three brothers and his two older brothers were fairly good size. He was a nice guy, we just never really hung out together that much.

4th grade - Pee Wee football. He was on one team and me on the other. Near the end of the game, the other team's halfback was scooting down the field when the clock ran out. The back stops about 30 yards from the end zone and everyone else quits the pursuit. Then the coaches are yelling for him to run and us to tackle him. I was the closest and started running after him as he took off. Next thing I know I am flat on my butt against the fence out of bounds. Jim had come from the side and taken my legs out from under me with a flying block (the below the waist block was legal then).

8th or 9th grade - Jim and I are auditioning together for an special choral group. As we are singing the audition song, I am having trouble following along. The reason is that I usually followed the piano. Finally at the end of the song, Jim turns to me and says, "You need to follow the notes on the song sheet." Frankly, it was kind of a revelation. I know it sounds stupid, but duh!

9th grade - playing tackle football in a neighbor's yard. Of course, none of us are wearing any kind of protective gear. Just playing football like kids usually do (or at least used to). Anyway, I am running the ball and Jim tackles me from behind landing squarely on my left heel as I am laying prone on the ground face down. I try to stand up and quickly fall after trying to put weight on my left foot. Unable to stand on my foot, I stand on my right and start hopping home. The funniest part, though not much of one, is the last view I had of the other players is them standing there staring at me and not saying a word or helping. As I got closer to home, I take one more look and they had resumed playing football like nothing happened.

So what did happen? I did not break anything, but severely sprained my left ankle and was in a cast for 9 weeks. I probably limped on it another 3-4 months. Moral of the story is don't play football without pads even though it would not have helped me any.

Those are my memories of Jim. Heck, he probably does not even remember those moments, but they are forever etched in my mind. So those are the kinds of impacts we can have on other people and not realize how we may have impacted their lives.