Pain Don't Hurt Read Online Free PDF Page A

nearly every summer around these men, hanging in their dorm rooms, where they would read me stories; on the field, where sometimes I got lucky enough to have them teach me how to throw, catch, punt, or buttonhook; and inside these locker rooms, listening to their dirty jokes, watching them rib one another for various things, and doing any and every small odd job I could just to try to absorb more of whatever they seemed to have. I learned different things from each of them, attributes I wanted. Frank made me want to look better physically, and he made me wonder when puberty was going to hit. He also was about to smack a sixteen-year-old, awkward, redheaded Mike Rooney directly in the thigh with a penis so large they used to have to gauze it to his leg just so he could play football.
    Mike came wandering in to start cleaning up, picking up the dirty clothes to run laundry, collecting cleats to start brushing them clean, any number of jobs we had as ball boys, when Frank smacked him directly on the leg. Mike Rooney jumped as though he had been hit by a Louisville slugger jammed full of rusty nails. Upon absorbing the full reality of what had just happened to him, and how many were there to witness it, Mike contorted his face and body up into some odd tribal-looking dry heave and shrieked like a four-year-old girl. The room thundered with laughter.
    Frank pulled his towel up and smacked Mike on the back. “I’m sorry, little man, I’m so sorry,” he said, gripping the towel with one hand and wiping tears away with the other.
    Mike, thrilled to be included in a joke with these men, even if he was the butt of it, grinned through a rashy-looking blush and began grabbing up piles of damp, sweaty clothes. He tossed a jersey at me, and the wet cloth of Jack Lambert’s number 58 smacked me right in the chest. As I fumbled to keep it from hitting the ground again, Jack slapped a massive hand onto my shoulder and grinned a wide grin (his dentures in place, as he was off the field), saying, “Thanks, kid.”
    Mel Blount, number 47, a kind-faced cornerback from Georgia whom I looked up to and who grew to be something of a distant uncle in my eyes, walked his jersey to me and placed it neatly in my hands, smiling, and thanked me. Jack Ham, number 59; “Mean” Joe Greene (who hated being called mean actually), number 75; and on and on . . . Titan after demigod stacked their “hero capes” into my hands. This was almost an everyday occurrence in the summers. One of my first summers with the Steelers, I had jokingly called Lynn Swann “Swannie” after hearing another player toss the nickname out. Lynn had gotten two inches from my then four-or-five-year-old face and growled at me, “Don’t you ever, ever call me that.” I trembled until I felt an enormous arm cross over my chest and number 34, Andy Russell, a fearsome linebacker, leaned in to mirror Lynn’s posture and snarled, “Back off, Swannie, he’s just a kid.” I let myself softly close one hand around Andy’s jersey hem, gently running the fabric between my thumb and forefinger, and felt vindicated when Lynn Swann stormed off. It was like having the Incredible Hulk standing behind me. I returned every summer after that even though I didn’t start getting paid for helping out for another ten years.
    I pushed the laundry to the washers in giant bins, where we would then separate all of it neatly. Jockstraps, T-shirts, and sanitary shorts went into small string bags to be washed separately. The players didn’t always take their pads out of their practice pants (knee pads, quad pads) even though they were supposed to, so we would have to peel them out. Pants got washed separately. Jerseys were the third pile and got washed on their own. This was my favorite washer to load up as I could count out the numbers, and I knew every single player who went along with the numbers. From roughly 1980 to