Frank, the Ex-Football Player

52 Stories in 52 Weeks: #6 Frank, the Ex-Football Player:

By: Mr. George Patnoe Jr.'s Ambidextrous Writing Brain - Mind

Frank the watched the Super Bowl from his chair with a glass of mountain spring water in his hand. He drank the cool water as he watched the rain hit the ground, the players, and even the watchers in stadium stands. He noticed that some football players were drinking water and other cold drinks even though they were soaking wet from the rain and from rolling around one way or another in the wet grass and mud. He noticed that many of the watchers in the stadium stands were also drinking drinks, though most of them were soaking wet. The rain did not usually rain all day long during a football game, but this was the Super Bowl, the last, but biggest game of the year. The winners of the Super Bowl were supposed to be the best team for the year, even though some Super Bowl teams were considered underdogs while other teams were considered to be the winners before the game even started.

Frank knew many football players and non football players who had gambled and still do gamble on the game of football, along with other games. Frank had gambled in the past, but Frank had learned the hard way that the underdog sometimes wins, and they win for different reasons. As Frank slowly sipped a small amount of the expensive water, just to keep his mouth wet, he recalled how he had played football many years ago. Sometimes, he played for the winning team, who sometimes lost, while in other years, he played for losing teams who won. Just as in each football moment, to each football game’s last seconds, an interception or a tumbling ball picked up by the defense side, would surprise everyone, but maybe none more nervously than those gamblers.

Frank instinctively knew that on Super Bowl Sunday, that day’s gamblers might have been the most nervous people on the planet, especially for those gamblers who were depending on their potential financial winnings to pay off some other gambling debt or to buy some new worldly items. Frank thought that even the young soldiers in a war might not have been more nervous than those gamblers who knew they could definitely lose money that maybe they did not have to lose. Why did gamblers who did not have the money to gamble with take the chance of losing their nonexistent money when they would be better off just watching the Super Bowl game with a glass of spring water. Would these same gamblers fight a war with unloaded guns, even as the other side was shooting at them with real bullets? The mental pleasure of winning at something costs many a men not only their future bank accounts, but their immediate egos too.

Frank had long ago freed himself from gambling on football games, even though he had then considered himself an expert on the teams and their players and their coaches and even the backroom and locker deals. Frank was taken himself out of the game of football and then he took himself out of the gambling game of football. As Frank sat still in his soft brown leather chair, with the big tv screen in front of him, he realized that millions of people in America were also watching the game, even if they did not watch a single game during the season. Why would millions of people, mostly men, watch a single game, when most of them did not watch football all season. It could be answered that the Super Bowl was the only football game being played that day, or that the tv producers silently forced people to watch the Super Bowl because the tv producers programmed only repeats of all other tv programs, or that people felt the human social need to join in on the party, whatever the party was that day, like a big Super Bowl party.

After Frank left the game of football, he began to wholeheartedly study the pathways of the mind instead of the pathways on the football field. Frank began to study human history, including human warfare, along with topics of the mind, such as psychology and philosophy.

Frank knew that there were pathways on and off of the football field. In many regards some of those pathways are remarkably the same and in other ways, those pathways are remarkably different. Football players can exercise good human and moral qualities both on and off the field, just as they can exercise subhuman qualities both on and off the field. Frank that recalled all of the football players he had known throughout his lifetime. Some of the nicest players on the field were just as nice off the field with their families and when they appeared in other public gatherings. These kind hearted players knew that football was just a game, meaning that at the end of each game, there would be a loser team and a winning team. But other players were different.

Frank remembered how many football players wanted to win no matter what they had to do to win the game, even if it meant needlessly hurting another player in or out of the game if they knew that they would not be caught during a commission of a crime, for the team, so the team might be better off to win the game. Some of these do anything to win players would also go to church to pray to God to help them win their games.

Frank chuckled as he focused one player who would pray before the game and then he would go and try to break someone’s knee cap or grabbing a helmet to pull a player down to the ground as hard as he could, even if it broke that player’s neck. Some players did not care if they hurt the other team’s players, while most of the players did not want to hurt the other team’s players.

Frank wondered what separates the type of people who mercilessly hurt other humans while other types of people show mercy on their fellow human, even if they are down and out.
What kinds of childhood paths fated people to lean towards on kind of evil path while other people were fated to lean towards being more of a saint than of a sinner. Were the brains and minds of the different football players preordained to complete differently or were they created by social and cultural norms. Then there were the fans.

Some fans are sometimes crazier than the players because some fans seem to needed a purpose to live, so they live for their team; as if they belong the team, like the team cares about the single people who actually watch the game of football. Those fans that put their favorite team label on their cars and trucks, along with wearing the team’s jacket all week. As the tv camera turned towards the fan’s seats, Frank saw a group of fans beginning to argue with some other people. A few arms were swinging towards the faces and bodies of other fans, just as if they were in a battle for some sort of homeland territory or as if they were trying to protect the homeland from foreign invaders, just as they did in the old times for the last millions of years of human development.

Of course, thought Frank; football was just about winning a limited timed game with certain rules that were suppose to govern the player’s actions, even if mistakes did take happen. Similarly, the laws of the state are supposed to govern how people act, but never means that they intend to perform their daily actions by obeying the state’s laws and social and cultural customs. Some people decide their course of action before the game begins, while other kinds of people decide their course of action during the game, because they have not decided what part of their brains they will use in every situation.

When football players are in the public arena, they are similar to politicians, but only in the sense that they have to make their particular fans happy; one with a football, the other with economic and legal decisions. Frank realized that many non-gambling fans obtain enjoyment when their wins, and they feel sad or sorrow when their teams loses a game, especially a big game. Yet, these same fans might not care a twinkle’s in their eye about what their local, state, and federal politicians are doing with the tax payers money behind closed doors. As Frank sat back in his nice leather chair, he wondered how many politicians really cared about football, except for their tax contributions.

Frank always paid his taxes on time, just as he remembered how most of the fans also paid taxes to their local, state, and federal governments. Frank also realized that most of the local, state, and federal politicians wanted all of the major sports games like football to continue with their mindless activities because even working mindless human animals paid taxes and then they would pay even more taxes when they bought football tickets, football food, football clothes, football beer, and so on, so on, so on. Frank the ex-football player began his study of economics and finance when he entered the university to study the mind.

Some people never really studied how the mind operates in the economic and finance fields. Of course there were courses on economics and finance and then again, there were college courses on psychology, on how the mind either does not care or does care about learning about money in both the personal and business and governmental and sports fields. How the human animal brain will spend thousands of hard worked for dollars on sports games instead of saving up those dollars by putting them into a ROTH retirement plan for their retirement. Most of them did not plan for their financial future, but they planned to see their favorite football team win their games for their team’s financial future. Frank knew that there was a lot wrong with the way gangs and groups of people thought about money and their financial future, along with separating the two.

Frank smiled to himself as he realized how gangs and other groups of people never thought about the future as individual thought about the future. Many of the same football fans were also church goers who never questioned about God, the universe, and other possibilities because of the mass connected brain concept. As Frank pushed aside some cheese crackers, he wondered what would happen if there was no mass thinking, just a lot of individual thinkers doing whatever they wanted to think and do? And then, Frank realized that when millions and billions of people lived together, there had to be some mass thinking like when they obeyed the laws of the land; no matter where that land was located. During a television commercial, Frank stood up to step out side to get a breath of fresh air.

Frank opened the front door to his house, to breathe in some fresh air when he noticed a boy riding a bike down the street. The boy’s bike ran into some broken glass when all of a sudden, he became to fall towards the ground. The boy did not have a bike helmet on his head; but still, all Frank could do was watch the boy and himself fall towards the ground. Frank’s mind rolled over to when he was a young man, who was not wearing a football helmet. Frank was hit from behind, under his knee as another player running, rushed into his chest from the front. Frank, being clipped as he held the football close to his body, recalled how his body and his head spun out of control, except as a faster and faster spin as he blanked out before his head hit the cold, frozen ground.

How fast is fast when you can not see your own body spinning in an arch, towards the frozen cement like ground, just as the air is being knocked out of you, and as another two hundred mass of muscle and bones is powerfully forcing your body and head to smack the ice cement even faster and harder than if you were just spinning by yourself; like an ice skater who spins but who falls down towards the ice, yet in some control of her body even as that body lands on the ice. The ice skater is not faced with a two hundred pound body hitting her behind her knee, while at the same time, another two hundred body is hitting her in the chest. Under that situation, even an ballet like ice skater could not stop from being out of control as the spinning became faster and faster until the final moment of impact.

When the bodies had jumped away from the unconscious Frank, he laid there motionless, until he semi-woke up to only feel his body as in a deep dream, seeing a patch of gray instead of blue skies and green grass. A normal breathing body was hindered from any sense of breathing because Frank’s breathing had stopped, though somehow, he was still automatically alive for the moment. Frank remembered how he felt his two hundred body as it just laid on the ground as his mind tried to control something, if not itself. Frank sensed a hint of a breathe as he could out his coach’s name, but even Frank could not hear his own voice. Frank noticed how he was somehow focusing more on his inner awareness to find that inner strength to snap out of a semi-conscious state to a state where as least he could talk to others. He heard his coach running to him as he seemed to be as frozen as the frozen ground.

Frank did not want to die, but he felt as if he had died, more than being semi-alive enough just to feel like he was dead again. Frank chuckled to himself as he recalled how different it was to be unconscious or unaware of anything, compared to being aware of an inner self, along with a dead body, or a body semi-breathing, yet between death and life. On the other hand, when he was laying there, there were different states of being and non-being all at once. First, semi-conscious of being just aware enough to know one is aware, and then a little more aware to be aware of the helpless, un-breathing body, and then a little more aware to be just aware enough of the body to know that Frank had to move his lips to utter the word, "HELP!" even as less than the softest whisper.

And then a little more aware to know that yelling the word HELP less than a whisper was not going to save him, so he tried to yell louder, and louder, and louder, just enough when finally help did arrive. But then there was a little more awareness that tried to move his body and legs and even his inner thinking. But then, when the body did move, the expanding pain spread throughout his awareness of the body that he had called himself. But moving the painful body was better than lying there dying, so Frank forced himself to stand up and stood next to his football teammates and coach who had rushed over to help him. Frank, semi-aware of his surroundings, was more aware of the pain that ran through every nerve of his body, forcing Frank to not run, but to drop to the floor as fast as he could lay down.

Dropping to the floor, Frank recalled how he lost his breath again, lost his awareness, out cold. His airless body floated up away from his skin and bones body. Flying free as a featherless bird, Frank looked down on the football field and over the other football players. It seemed really natural to just be flying free, like flying in a night dream. But as he looked down upon his lifeless body, he noticed a doctor putting a needle in his arm, and then bam!-a speedy entrance back into the body, even as he felt a bit funny from whatever that drug was, Frank remembered how fuzzy his brain was feeling, but he was now back inside his unmoveable body, which was lying in a hospital bed.

Frank ran out the door to the boy, and he asked him if he was ok. The boy did not hit his head, just a few scratches here and there. "You will be ok, kid. What ever does not kill you will only make you stronger." The boy curiously looked at Frank, and said, "I am ok. I am going home." Frank yell to the boy as he rode off, "Have your parents buy you a bike helmet." "The boy shook his head yes." and rode off.

Frank walked back inside his house, knowing that he missed the halftime show. Instead, he traveled back into a different time, to a different person, with a different perspective. As Frank calmly sat down in his, he noticed as did millions of other football fans the third quarter begin. The football was kicked high over to the other side, a runner ran as far as he could before being tackled by another football player. All seemed well and good as the team’s quarterback threw the football into the air, a nice throw into the arms of a catcher who made a touchdown; until the other team’s player knocked into the quarterback by slamming his arm into the chest as another defense team member was running low into the back of the quarterback’s knee.

Frank rose up as did many other football watcher’s. Sure, the quarterback was down, but not because his head hit the frozen ground, as his helmet had protected his head. But nevertheless, his knees were taken out for at least the rest of this game. After they knew the quarterback as ok, that means not brain dead, Frank calmly sat down as did many thousands of other football players. A backup quarterback ran onto the football field, as he buckled his helmet onto his head. Frank the ex-football player stated out loud, "The show must go on, as does life!"