In tenth grade I tried my hand at JV Football. The venture was to last one year because, and I was not aware of this going in, football hurts. With football came weightlifting class, an easy credit designed to keep football players from over stimulating their fragile brains. Mixed in with football players were three mentally handicapped students, placed in a normal class to help integrate them with the other students. Naturally there were small problems, such as how they constantly dropped weights on themselves and had to be pried out of machines. An even more consistent problem was Terry.

Terry was one of the handicapped students, but this kid had a death wish. He was constantly punching unsuspecting students or getting into arguments over who owned the weights. Coach Anderson, our weightlifting teacher, knew nothing of meeting the needs of a handicapped student; he was hired to coach football. His only rule was that we not hit them back, just ignore them, and we did. That is, until we had a substitute coach.