Crash - part 1

Let me tell ya’ll a story about a kid named Crash Bonaparte …

I wouldn’t say he is a nerd, but he is certainly an odd duck. I wouldn’t say he is a great student, because he gets straight “C”s – and I’m serious, six classes, six “C”s, not a plus or minus among them. I wouldn’t even say Crash is a great athlete, but he is the best quarterback in South Dakota.

He’s not fast. It’s been said that he is deceptively slow and limps for no apparent reason. Crash can’t even throw a spiral, but he can throw a ball sideways 60 yards. His right arm is actually bigger than his left, like he only lifts weights with the one arm, which he does. “Seems like a waste of effort to do both,” he says.

Crash has an uncanny knack for not getting tackled. I’ve seen many a linebacker have a bead on his #9, get ready to wrap him up, to screw his head into the ground, and all the LB comes up with is air. Crash ducks or trips, regains his balance and throws, not a wounded duck but a goose with seizures. The ball wobbles just over the charging defensive end, flutters, just out of reach of the D-back, and lands in the hands of his receiver – score!

I haven’t seen it happen once; I’ve see it happen 53 times. Crash had 19 touchdown passes our sophomore year at Shindler High School – and didn’t even start until the third game of the year. He has 34 scoring passes this season alone – going into tomorrow afternoon’s state semifinal game against arch-rival Rowena High.

Crash, who claims to be a distant descendent of Napoleon Bonaparte and has the family tree documented on an Excel spreadsheet to prove it, is 5-foot-11, much taller than his second-cousin 43-times removed. Crash weighs 165 pounds, has curly dishwater blonde hair to the tip of his boney shoulders, and used to wear glasses until he bought contacts. The fact that he wears contacts would usually be so meaningless as to leave out of this important story, but for some ungodly reason only Crash knows, he chose to purchase black ones.

Some high school kids get ink (tattoos to you old-timers) to express their individuality, even though everybody else has them. Some even choose to get piercings to express their individuality, even though everybody else has them. Crash Bonaparte has eerie black contacts. Nobody else has those.

I asked him once after practice why he got them and he paused for an uncomfortable amount of time, as is his annoying tendency, and told me: “Because.”

I asked him: “Because why?”

He stared at me with those spooky black eyes and answered, perhaps honestly, but who knows with him: “Because I accidentally ordered them online when I hit the wrong button.”

“What kind did you intend to buy?” I asked.

Pause. Pause. “The ones with lightning bolts.”

“Oh,” I said.

He claims they are a blessing in disguise, as they tend to reduce the glare of the stadium lights, and that if he had bought the lightning bolts they would have increased the glare and it might have resulted in more interceptions and fewer touchdowns.

And who am I to argue with Crash? It would only lead to more confusion, as arguing with him is useless and extremely painful to the brain of anybody who tries.

Almost everybody at one time or another asks Crash what his real name is. They figure it is something exotic or so weird that he wouldn’t want to use it, but they would be wrong. His real, God-given name is Crash. Seems his mom was about eight and a half months pregnant and driving home from running errands in Sioux Falls. She was driving past a Liberty Tax office and was waving to one of those people dressed up as the Statue of Liberty. Mrs. Bonaparte is a friendly woman. She’s also easily distracted and rear-ended the FedEx truck stopped at a light in front of her. The crash apparently induced labor, but no injuries. An ambulance whisked her to Sioux Valley Hospital, where Crash was born 45 minutes later. He’s still happy he wasn’t named FedEx.

Crash just turned 16 last month and is old enough to drive a car, but chooses not to. He can afford to, as he’s made more money in his part-time job than the rest of our classmates combined, but says he has no intention of ever driving an automobile. It’s not that he is some environmentalist afraid to add some exhaust to the ozone; it’s because he is afraid of squirrels. Not frightened of them like they are going to attack him or scratch or bite him. He’s afraid of running over them.

I asked about it once during some quality one-on-one time in the middle of one of our thousands of ping pong games. He told me what he considers to be his deepest darkest secret.

It seems Crash had a dream one night that his favorite singer, Miley Cyrus (yes, you heard me right), had morphed into a squirrel and Crash was driving the brand new Mustang he’d been saving for all his life, when the squirrel/Miley ran into the street and he accidentally smushed it/her. From that night on, he vowed never to own a car. Guess he didn’t want to take the chance of killing Miley – though I would swerve onto the sidewalk to do so.

So instead of buying the cherry-red Mustang, he bought a cherry-red electric scooter. And it’s no ordinary scooter. It’s a high-end, 600-watt Tiger Shark that can top out at 18 miles per hour, 19 if he’s going down hill with the wind at his back. He has deemed the Tiger Shark scooter to be “squirrel-friendly.”

But don’t make fun of Crash. He’s my best bud and I’d have to kick your butt. As his left offensive tackle, I watch his back on the field – and off. My name is Badger McDougal and tomorrow is game day. So back off.

***

Shindler High is the smallest school in Class 9C, which pretty much makes us the smallest school in the entire Rushmore state. There are probably smaller schools out there, but they don’t have football teams; so I don’t think they count as schools. We have 34 kids total from freshmen to seniors – 17 boys and 17 girls, which works out well for the school dances. All 17 boys play on the football team, some better than others but all pretty well. We’ve never played in a state championship game, never been to the DakotaDome. They say it’s a nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there.

Our nickname is the Snapping Turtles. Yep. When our school honor roll is printed in the newspaper, it’s called Shindler’s List. Yep. Our school color (not colors) is brown. Our football uniforms are all brown, pants, jerseys and helmets. We look like crap, but we don’t play like it.

People used to make fun of us because of our uniforms and because we played so badly while wearing them. They don’t mock us for that reason anymore. Now about the only thing they have on us is our school building. We don’t have a brand spanking new school spread over 20 acres with water fountains and archways leading into it. We don’t have a fancy mural painted on our gymnasium walls. Heck, we don’t even have air conditioning.

As if you didn’t already know, our school is located in the former Shindler elevator – you know, the place where farmers sold their corn and beans. Our old school burned down 12 years ago. Fortunately, for us, but not so much so for area farmers, the elevator went out of business about the same time. Our school board bought it from the bank for $1. Smart folks those school board members are.

There are four small rooms in the old office portion of the elevator. The principal and secretary have the tiniest room, which Principal Potter likes, but his smokin’ hot secretary Miss Tate not so much. The other three rooms are for math/science, English/literature, history/government. The computer lab is in one of the storage bins, while industrial arts/shop is in another storage bin. The third bin is the teachers’ lounge. The metal bins work pretty well until about April, when your average sunny 70-degree day pumps the temperature up into triple digits, and don’t even get me started on the month of May. Needless to say we don’t have many fat teachers – not anymore anyway.

I’m pretty sure we have the hottest, dustiest and tallest school in South Dakota, so that’s something.

***
Check back tomorrow as Shindler prepares to face Rowena in the state semifinals.