It was 1974 and I was teaching at The Judge Advocate General’s School, which is located on the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.  Students were no longer protesting the Vietnam War.  For all practical purposes, it was over.  So how were these students, many away from home for the first time, to expend their energy.  The answer was streaking.

Streaking became quite popular on campuses across the nation.  It didn’t matter whether there was an athletic event or the outdoor meeting of the Ladies Horticultural Society, some young dude, naked as a jaybird, would go streaking through the event.  One of our Basic Class Graduations was interrupted by a streaker (and it was indoors).  No one seemed to get too upset.

The levity of the situation caused me to sit down and write the following letter to the editor of the Daily Progress newspaper.  They published it under the title, “After Streaking, What?”

Dear Editor:

Rah, Rah, Raw for the streaking streakers of this wonderful country.  No one should really complain.  Youth has always had an overabundance of energy and it must be expended.  So why not streak?  Just keep in mind that three years ago, some were expending their energy making bombs and burning down ROTC buildings on campus.  Bless their streaking streaks.

However, I am concerned about the longevity of streaking.  While streaking is great for comfortable spring days, I fear that the heat of the summer will have a deterrent effect upon even the heartiest of streakers and that the sport will wane.  In short, streaking will soon be out of season.

I submit that those of us who advocate harmless frolic are compelled to bring forth an acceptable substitute.  After some careful thought, I believe that gargoyling is an acceptable substitute.  This practice would consist of the student climbing up on the outside of a university building in the nude and assuming a position on the facade as a gargoyle.  Our society has long accepted the appearance of weird looking gargoyles on buildings, so it would be inconsistent to object to gargoyling.

While university students have competed to see which could gather the largest group of streakers, gargoyling, too, can have its competitive aspects;  for example, most gargoyles on campus, or the highest gargoyle on campus, or the weirdest looking gargoyle.  The ultimate contest could be gargoyling for the longest period of time.  Any student  who could hold his pose for over four hours would definitely be a contender.  By then, he would surely be subjected to fatigue, the campus police and those nasty birds.

While I realize that gargoyling, like streaking, suffers from the malady of being seasonal, those of us who are organizing the Society for the Encouragement of Harmless Frolics are already concerning ourselves with the selection of a winter sport.

                                                                    Sincerely,

                                                                    P. J. Rice

The twelfth year of my life should have been a good one.  I was learning how to pitch.  My Dad, who caught professionally, was really excited about the way I was throwing the ball.  I was playing “B” League baseball (ages 10-13) in East St. Louis and no pitcher could be 13.  So, this was my year.  The sky was the limit.

Early in the summer, a bunch of kids were taking their bicycles out Bunkum Road and so, I raced home to get my bike.  On my way to catch them, a dog started chasing the bike.  I decided that if I just ignored the dog, I would be OK.  What a dumb idea.  The dog bit me on the calf.  It wasn’t a bad bite, but it broke the skin.  I went home and my Mom took me to the doctor’s office.  We waited all afternoon and when we saw the doctor, he gave me a tetanus shot and told us we needed to find the dog.   Well, we tried, but we never did.

The moral of the story is if you are ever bit by a dog, don’t loss sight of the mutt.  I was bit again while in Vietnam and my earlier experience paid off.  I found the owner of the dog and when the dog died (that was scary), I practically lived with the veterinarians until they let me know that the dog did not have rabies.

At age twelve, I had to take the rabies shots.  Doc Stein explained that they were given one a day for 14 days and they needed to be given in the lining of the stomach.  After each shot, I had to lay down for about 15 minutes.  I felt like I had been kicked by a horse.  Doc Stein was out of town for shots 13 and 14.  So, his father, the elder Doctor Stein gave me the shots.  He explained that there was no absolute requirement that they be given in the stomach.  He gave me shots in the buttocks and thigh that were both painless.  I just checked, and today the rabies vaccine consists of four shots and they are given in the arm, like a flu shot.  What a rip.

I had my last shot on Wednesday and started getting sick on Friday.  I was weak, miserable and throwing up.  Mom took me to see Doc Stein on Saturday and he gave me some cold medicine.  We finally got him to come to the house late Sunday afternoon (Yes, they really did make house calls).  I was rushed to the hospital.  My white blood cell count was out of sight.  I had an appendicitis.

When they operated Monday morning, it turned out my appendix had ruptured and gangrene had set in.  I found out later that Doc Stein could not complete the operation and that another doctor stepped in and saved me.  I was one sick puppy.  Thank goodness for penicillin.  Every four hours, I would get a penicillin shot in my bottom.  I got to where, during the night, I could roll over and get the shot without even waking up.  My bottom looked like a pin cushion.  They left a long drainage tube in me which required my bandages to be changed every day.  Every few days, they would pull out a little of my tube and cut it off.  Now there is a strange sensation.

I was in the hospital for about three weeks.  My pitching career was over.  About a month after I got out of the hospital and while still under Doc Stein’s care, it came out in the local newspaper that Doc Stein and his wife were both addicted to morphine.  This made a lot of things fall into place.  That’s why he couldn’t finish the operation.  That’s why he had to wait until his wife got home with the car to come see me that Sunday, when they had three cars.  I also remember his secretary telling me how fantastic he was with an hypodermic needle (lots of practice).  The only good news was that office visits took less time.  He was only permitted to care for patients already under his care.

In the fall, I went out for junior high football.  I made it through the three tough weeks of preseason ball, but when the doctor showed up for physicals, I knew I was in trouble.  The hole where the tube had been had healed, but not properly.  The doctor told me that he would not approve my physical, but if I could get my doctor’s approval, I could play.  I went to see Doc Stein and he cut the skin tissue over the hole and let it drain.  I remember him saying, “This shouldn’t hurt.”  Maybe he was referring to himself.  It hurt like hell.  I healed up fine, but my 8th grade football season was over.  What a helpless feeling.

No one will ever convince me that the rabies shots in the stomach weren’t the cause of my appendix going bad and rupturing.  I have never gotten a doctor to agree with me.  They can’t tell me what caused my appendicitis.  They would just blow me off.  But, these are the guys who used to put leeches on people.

Tom Mongan and I were both born and raised in East St. Louis, Illinois.  Even though we were the same age and in the same grade (and from the same neighborhood), we never met until we went off to college.  He went to Assumption High School and I went to East Side High.  Never the twain shall meet.

Anyway, both being from the same town and away from home, we became good friends.  By the second semester, we were sharing a dorm room.  Tom was the smart one.  In English composition class, he wrote a great paper on his/our home town.  For economy of effort, I used his paper in my English composition class.  He got an A and I got a C!  I went to my teacher, Miss Hodges, and told her I really wanted to do better and could she explain to me what was wrong with “my” paper.  I knew the paper deserved better that a C.  She never did explain to me what was wrong with the paper, but she decided that it was easier to give me a B, than to put up with my constant inquiries.

Nutty Tom and I only lasted one semester together.  We got caught spraying shaving soap down the hallway.  I came up with the conclusion that they couldn’t prove it was us.  We were going to stonewall.  Then, one of the monitors produced an envelope addressed to me covered with shaving soap.  I accused Nutty Tom of looking at my mail, but it didn’t work.  Our punishment was to be separated the next year into distant buildings.

The next year, I found myself living way South and a half-mile to the North was Nutty Tom.  Those who controlled the dorm assignments had kept their promise.  That first day, one of the assistant coaches called me in and told me I needed to be assigned to a room designated for athletes.  Guess who ended up being my next door neighbor?  Nutty.

We were both conscientious students.  We just had strange work habits.  We generally didn’t do any homework until after 11 o’clock at night.  Then, we would work until we got done (usually 1:30 to 2:00 AM).  Nutty’s roommate, Luke, would go to bed at a reasonable hour and sleep through our antics.  Some time after 1:00 AM, we would find everything we said was funny.  It was a riot.  We called it “giddy hour.”  One of our favorite games was feeding Luke.  We would slip over and put a cookie on his chest.  Luke would find it and eat it without ever waking up.  This was great sport.  The only time I remember Luke waking up was when some of our group (including Mike “the animal” Magac) misappropriated a cooked turkey from a frat house and we put a drumstick on Luke’s chest.

Just to let you know, Luke did not choke to death.  Lowell Lukas ended up with his Masters in Physical Education and became a very successful golf coach at Central Connecticut State University.  In fact, Luke was elected to the Golf Coaches Association of America’s Hall of Fame.  In his acceptance speech, neither Nutty nor I received any credit for nourishing him during his formative years.  Come to think of it, I guess he never knew.

One late night, when Nutty and I were cutting across campus, a campus security guard tried to stop us to see our IDs.  I just kept walking.  We had done nothing wrong and I was sure he had no authority.  I told Nutty Tom to keep walking, but he stopped.  He took out his wallet and showed the guard a one dollar bill and said, “I’m George Washington.”

Carole, my future wife, didn’t want me hanging around with Nutty Tom.  And, Gay, a sweet Suzie Stephens, who became Nutty’s wife didn’t want him hanging out with me.  That was because when anything went wrong, we were always together and each told our future bride that it was the other one’s idea.  Everyone called me PJ and I was smug in my knowledge that PJ didn’t sound as guilty as Nutty Tom.

Well, that was a long time ago and our wives now are willing to let us get together.  In fact, they join us.  Nutty Tom became a banker in Houston specializing in trusts, investments and financial services.  I guess his title at “Nutty Tom” had to disappear after he left school.

He has a website entitled Securityimpressions.com which is quite impressive.  If you want to know financially what is going on, what went wrong and what to do about it, check out Nutty Tom’s blog site.  There is nothing on the blog site which would make you think he was once known at “Nutty Tom,” or “Nutty” for short.

I was some kid when I was growing up.  I had a lot of things figured out.  For example, in the 7th grade, I wrote a history paper explaining that when the Republicans were in power, we had depressions and financial crises.  When the Democrats were in power we would end up in a war.  I concluded by explaining that it was up to the American people to decide whether they wanted war or depression.  I was amazed by the fact that I was the first person to figure that out.  I was really annoyed when I got a C- on my paper.  So much for originality of thought!

Another thing I figured out was if you approached every game like it’s a “life or death struggle,” you lose less often.  And, I did lose less often.  I was a really bad loser and, come to think of it, a really bad winner.  Kids didn’t like me, but, hey, in a life or death struggle, where does friendship come in?

My Dad was an excellent checker player.  I wasn’t happy when he beat me, but I had removed checkers (with him) from a life or death struggle.  When I was ten, we went on a vacation in the Ozarks and I played checkers with my Uncle Bob.  I could tell from his moves that he was no match for me.  I jumped one of his checkers and the next thing I knew, he made a triple jump into my king row.  The checkers were made of Bakelite, an early plastic, and before I realized what I was doing, I crushed four of the checkers in my hand.  I wanted to play him again, but he refused to play with broken checkers.

Not much changed through high school.  I think I seemed like a normal kid until I got on an athletic field and then the adrenaline and the old philosophy took over.  When I reflect back, I’m surprised someone didn’t throw a net over me.  Then again, there was reinforcement for my philosophy.  We never lost a football game the entire time I was in high school.

Football is a sport that requires its players to be emotionally “up” for the game.  Senator John Culver, one of my partners at Arent Fox and a friend, was a star fullback at Harvard College.  He told me one day while we were on the topic, “Jack, it’s not the kind of sport where you get up in the morning and while putting on your socks, say to yourself, ‘Well, I guess I’ll go out there today and throw my body into people with the distinct possibility that either they or I will be injured.’ ”  I guess I never figured out how to get “up” for a game without being in a frenzy.

East St. Louis Senior High School played teams from as far away as Chicago and Indianapolis just to fill out our schedule.  In October, 1954, we traveled to Warren Central High School in Indianapolis.  I was the second string quarterback.  My parents went to the game.  They watched our game on Friday night and then drove up to Purdue to see my brother Bill play for the Missouri Tigers on Saturday.  We beat Warren Central 19-0 and I got to play in the 4th quarter.  I threw a long pass to one of our ends.  He was ten yards behind everyone and I hit him right in the hands.  He dropped the ball.  I went crazy.  I was storming on the field.  I was storming on the sideline.  How could he do that to me when I threw such a perfect pass?

On Sunday, my Dad sat me down and told me that Bill had not gotten into the game against Purdue.  But, he was much prouder of Bill than he was of me.  He read me the riot act regarding my antics on the field (and on the sideline).  And so the process began.  I began to realize that I had to be accountable for my actions.  At a minimum, that meant not showing up my team mates.

My rehab has never been completely successful.  But I do have an additional philosophy that I live by and recommend to you.  It is, “If what has you upset won’t be bothering you in three days, then it’s not worth getting upset over.”  If you break a plate – clean it up – move on.  Even if you have a fender bender – get over it.

This won’t come as a shock.  Even though I have been playing many sports for many years, I have never received a Sportsmanship award (never even been nominated).  But then, any committee who knew me, might think I would find the nomination insulting.