Off Topic: Today’s Prose 1

Inspired by actual events…metaphorically.

Coach Walter Flint leaned his warm forehead against the cool, gray tiles of the hallway wall. He shut his eyes and tried to slow down his galloping heart beat. The entire starting offense and defense of his new team have been MIA for six days. Seven days ago, the unofficial “team captain” emailed him about bringing the rest of the starters over to his house that evening to go over some old formations as well as new plays. Coach Flint turned down four-man basketball with the University Dean to wait for his boys. They never showed up. It wasn’t like the “team captain” to request a meeting with the Coach and not keep the appointment, especially without any explanation why plans had changed.

Flint’s wife reminded him that Spring Break was just ending. Perhaps the captain simply meant he would like to bring the rest of the offense and the defense over sometime in the near future, rather than that very night. Flint saw the logic behind his wife’s idea, but he wasn’t inclined to believe it. The captain was a man of his diction. He might not say everything he meant or thought, but he meant everything he expressed. Translation: Something wasn’t right.  The coach logged onto his Qmail account one more time, in case any of the players were on–they weren’t. He then systematically called each starter’s emergency contact numbers. Nothing.

Still pressing his head against the wall, Coach Flint mentally poured through all worse case scenarios. after a few minutes, he said to a non-existent audience, “This is what happens when I don’t have a special teams or a practice squad.”

Agonizing over the fate of not just his offense and defense, but also of his future career in football was not going to make any of his players materialize. Coach Flint slowly made his way upstairs to his wife.