Bue Devils

Chuck said, "I want to be The Blue Devils.  I was always on teams with names like the Twins and the Jets.  I want to be The Blue Devils."  And so that is what our volleyball team became.  The Blue Devils.  

We played our first game against a fraternity team, and they came out like it was a laugher.  Most of us played barefoot since all we wore were flip-flops.  And we won.  Easily.  Those boys were right, it was a laugher.  

When we came out for our second game, the coach running the show told us we couldn't play in bare feet.  He didn't like us, we could tell.  

"Why?" we asked. 

"It's the rule."  

So we had to play in our flip-flops which made it much more difficult.  But it was during this game that I invented the overhand serve.  Call me a liar if you want, but you can check and see.  No one was serving overhand in 1971.  I don't know what made me think I could do it, either, but I just threw the ball into the air, jumped, and smacked it overhand.  They didn't have a chance.  They never returned one of my overhand serves, but I was unable to control it all the time and about half of them went out of bounds.  Still, we got enough points out of it to win easily.  I could see the coach looking at us dubiously trying to decide if he could tell me that it was illegal.

At our next game, a small crowd of people came to watch.  They had heard about the hippie team that was winning at volleyball, playing in flip-flops and beating the fraternity teams.  It was fun.  There were girls.  

We lost.  

I think it was the pressure, maybe, or a lack of concentration, but probably it was too much concentration that did it.  We lost in the third match and only by the smallest amount.  Still, it was a crushing defeat.  Our star had faded.  The phenomenon was over.  

But we were known.  One of my profs had come out to see us play. He was a strange man with long hair combed straight back from his forehead.  He was heavy-ish and had what might have once been a powerful build.  His classes were theater.  He was like a preacher ranting and raving about history, acting it all out before our startled eyes.  His politics were a mystery that left us wondering which side he came down on, the left or the right.  No matter, we were enthralled by his performances.  Passing our table before class, he would pause halfway up the stairs and call to us.

"Come.  It is time to transcend all this, time to leave the hoi poloi behind."  

I began to imagine myself becoming a history professor.  I could see myself having grown a paunch, carrying a battered soft leather briefcase and a handful of worn books and wearing a tweed jacket with patches at the elbows.  I would be revered by my students.  And at those times, seeing myself looking back from some distant future where I taught at a small college in Canada, I would become nostalgic for my own youth that I was so eager to leave behind.  

The soft light of fading afternoon would fill the big room where I sat looking over the lake through the big picture windows after most of the students and professors were gone.  I would stay and savor the day, all that had happened, all that might.