Back in the Day

I remember when I was in sixth grade. Up to that point in my life I had not spent one full year in a single school. I moved around a lot you could say. But in sixth grade we moved to Wausau, Wisconsin where I would finally setting down and stay in one place until I graduated high school. I remember it as the first day of starting at the new school. I got into a soccer game at recess. I had on green hiking boots. These boots were sweet I tell you. The color of them was evergreen. That is how I remember them anyway. I am guessing that no one else really thought they were that sweet but I did. Anyway, while playing soccer I kept kicking the ball to one kid. I did not do it conscientiously. It just worked out that way. This kid ended up being Chris Schumacher. After the game we talk and he knew I was new to the school. From that day we were pretty much inseparable until we graduated high school six years later.

I remember getting pared up with Chris in reading class that same week. We were to read a book in teams of two to ourselves silently. We had to share the book. So the teacher instructed us to start reading. I immediate took my finger and started moving it across each page like I was a speed reader. But really I was a poor reader at best. Having never spent a full year in a single school really takes it toll on you. After about 3 or 4 lines from the book Chris turns to look at me like I was crazy. A reading virtuoso at that age he must have thought. I kept up the ruse for a few more lines. Then I turned my head and looked at him. And we both broke out into childish laughter. It was so funny. The teacher looked at us like she would have break up apart. It was the first of many times a teacher would give us that look from sixth grade all the way to senior year. We tried to keep it down but kept laughing about it. That was the start of a continued look that we still give each other at the young age of forty year old. We can still give each other that same look and break out laughing to this day. We have the most particular sense of humor and it has remained that way even now.

Another time probably that same week, or close to it, we walked home from school to Chris’s house. It was a few miles but back then it was no big deal. We walked everywhere back then. To school dances, to the mall, everywhere. One time we walked to the skating rink and it had to be 5 or 6 miles. But this day we walked to his house for the first time. And when we got to Chris’s neighborhood he would go up to a house and say this is where I live. We would walk up to the door and then at the last minute Chris would say, “Just kidding, that is not my house.” We would run down the street laughing. He must have done that for seven houses at different times during the walk home. Each time we laughed just the same. It was just as funny each time. By the time we got to his real house I did not believe him and expected to run away laughing. But we made it. We laughed at just about everything back then. When we got together it was guaranteed that people would be looking at us like we were crazy. And we liked it that way.

Chris’s Dad used to call me Crazy Eddie because I was a little wild. When we got a little older we used to take out his parent’s bikes. They were old and clunky with baskets on them. Other kids wouldn’t be caught dead on these bikes. Fat tires, probably rusty, and if you got going too fast they would shake like crazy. We rode them all over town like we were the shit. We did not care what anyone thought back then. We knew were were too cool for school. But this one time stands out. The roads just had a fresh coat of tar on them by Chris’s house and then a layer of crushed rocks put over the tar. We came blazing down the street. Bikes shaking and us peddling just as fast as we could. Franklin, Chris’s dad, was standing on the porch watching us race down the street to his house. We rounded the corner and the bike I was on gave way and I spilled it hard. I remember looking up and Franklin was shaking his head just looking at me. He did not know what to think but I can bet was mumbling, “Crazy Eddie” under is breath. He just shook his head and walk into the house. I picked up the bike and brushed out the tarred rocks from my bloody knees. I looked at Chris pulling into the driveway ahead of we. Chis looked at his Dad walking into the house and then back at me. We both immediately broke out laughing. We laughed until our guts about busted open. I am laughing right now just thinking about it.

But we are all grown up now. We still laugh a lot when we get together just the same. We don’t talk as much these days and the time we see each other has been less and less over the last five years or so but we still manage some kind of get together one time a year now. This is usually in a basketball tournament back in Wausau. We have played with the same team every year since 1992.

But the reason I started this post was because Chris has won the NCAA Division III National title with this IWU woman’s track team. This is a huge honor for him and his university and I am very proud of him. You can read all about his at PANTAGRAPH.COM

Just a few days ago Chris was also names Coach of the Year. Now he has led his team to a national title!

Amazing considering it seems like just yesterday the we were getting spanked with a ping-pong paddle in the youth director’s office at our local YMCA in Wausau, Wisconsin for making prank calls from his office phone. But the funny thing is that we did not make any prank calls and just told people we did. After we got spanked you know what we did as soon as we walked out of his office? We laughed until our guts hurt!

Congratulations Chris!