I have done things in my life of which I am not proud. This is NOT one of them.
It was an abnormally hot Saturday in July of ‘96. The Rangers had a four game lead in the West, Independence Day was the #1 movie in America, and I was in love with US Olympic Gymnast Dominique Moceanu.
My friend Brandon and I had spent the morning cycling our usual summer path; once around the block, up to the newly built high school, once around its parking lot, and back. Approximately 2.5 miles round trip.
Once we had pedaled all our 13 year old legs (and attention spans) could handle, we took refuge beneath the two giant oaks that shaded Brandon’s yard. As we sat and rested, Brandon began to contemplate who had the best arm in the Rangers’ outfield. I married Dominique Moceanu in my mind.
It didn’t take long for our bodies to rejuvenate - as is the case when you’re 13 - and our minds soon turned to the subject of “What now?”. Any form of competitive sport was out of the question, seeing as Brandon and I playing one-on-one anything almost always ended in fisticuffs, and I had quickly learned that fighting was not one of my spiritual gifts.
We weren’t going to go inside either. Moms and soap operas were inside. And laundry. And rooms to clean. And dishes to wash. No. Inside was not an option. Boys don’t belong inside anyway. We break things.
So, non competitive and outdoors. Cycling it was.
But, as we gathered our bikes, this (un)fortunate conversation happened:
Instead of riding our bikes...
Yes...
What if we turned them upside down...
Go on...
to where they’re sitting up on the seat and handlebars...
Uh huh...
and we spin the front tire really, really hard...
I’m liking where this is going...
Then we stop the tire from spinning using only our noses...
BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!
And so we did. Many, many times in a row. It was incredible. It tickled more than hurt, and the friction between our noses and the rubber sounded just like a particular bodily function that 13 year boys find hilarious. In my 29 years of life, I have never laughed harder than I did that day.
The next morning, I crawled out of bed at 8:00 am and clumsily made my way to the kitchen for my traditional pre-church donut feast. I announced my presense with a somewhat coherent “Good morning”, but received back only blank/confused/angry stares. “What. On. Earth. Did. You. Do?!”, exclaimed my mother, to which I replied with a confused look of my own. “Your nose?!?!?!”
My nose? My Nose! I quickly found the closest reflective surface and took a look. There, directly in the center of my face, was the most impressive looking scab that my body had every produced. It was perfectly circular in shape and covered the entire width of my beak.
I told my mom of the bicycle tire nose stopping from the day previous, and she was not happy. She was disappointed in her son. Her Rudolph-the-Rednose-Reindeer-looking son. Her Rudolph-the-Rednose-Reindeer-looking-about-to-have-to-go-to-Sunday-morning-church son.
The rest of the morning carried on as normal. I finished my donuts, brushed my teeth, showered, and got dressed. We loaded up the family car and headed to church. But this was to be no normal Sunday. As soon as we walked in the door, I saw the greatest thing. There, standing in the foyer, was Brandon, and on HIS nose was an IDENTICAL SCAB!!!!!!!!! It was amazing. And our dads thought so too. So much so that they approached Rusty Mitchum, long time church member and humor columnist for the Lindale News and Times, and said “Boy do we have a story for you!” Rusty loved it and wrote about the two boys at church with matching scabs on their noses from stopping spinning bicycle tires with them in his next week’s column. And we were famous.
Brandon passed away in January, and I’ve had a pretty hard time dealing with it. But stories like this one, along with many others, keep me smiling.
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