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Jinx
- University of Iowa Press
- Chapter
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Jinx Even now, I can't think ofSlippery Rock without revulsion. For years, I hated the entire state of Pennsylvania simply because it contained Slippery Rock. Later, I decided I liked the Eastern halfofthe state because Philadelphia was a mitigating factor. We had moved to Slippery Rock after my mother's return to school to earn a master's degree. This was her first teaching job: Slippery Rock State Teacher's College. One sometimes heard the unlikely name ofSlippery Rock on the tail end ofsports reports across the countrypartly because Slippery Rock had a good football team and partly because newscasters liked to say Slippery Rock. Slippery Rock is located about seventy miles north of Pittsburgh, and supposedly its name derived from an unlikely incident in which a settler, chased by Indians, led them across the creek, where they all slipped on the stones in the river, save the wily settler, who knew his way around. "Watch out for the slippery rocks," he yelled back at them. IfSlippery Rock had a tourist industry, one might produce large quantities ofcoffee mugs depicting such a hilarious scene. Or not. In 1969, Slippery Rock had about three thousand residents and perhaps as many students. The nearest big town was Grove City-it had an ice-cream parlor-that's what made it big to me. Slippery Rock had one main street, one restaurant, a newsstand, a town drunk who doubled as the town artist, and freshmen at the college wore beanies around campus. We lived in an apartment complex, and my friends consisted of neighborhood kids who doubled as classmates. The neighborhood kids wanted to know right offwhere I was from, where I was born, and I told them New York City. They had heard of New York City, but Slippery Rock was their world, and in a strange reversal of THE NATURAL LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE, they started calling me a hick. "No, you're the hicks," I insisted. My main friends were a red-haired kid namedJoey, a tall kid named I45 Nola Dick, and a blond kid named Steve. Their families: the Smiths, the Stones, and the Minks, did not believe in wasting syllables on either first names or surnames. Steve Mink spat all the time-all the time, even indoors-Steve never had much spit in him as a consequence; he never allowed moisture to accumulate, but I remember him spitting once on our carpet. "Don't do that in here," my mom told Steve. "That's disgusting." "I do it at home," Steve said. "You're not at home," she told him. We used to go to Steve's house down the road to play football. Steve had a go-cart and a grandmother who beheaded chickens while we played football, as if she were part of some kind of surreal and evil cheerleading squad. I was generally the quarterback because I was too skinny to actually tackle anyone, but pretty much fun for the other guys to tackle. I played without shoes and was rarely tackled because I was so terrified that I did all kinds ofamazing maneuvers to avoid any body contact whatsoever-leaping over my opponents as they lunged for me, zigzagging and whirling with the grace of a pro. But I soon tired ofthis play, figuring the odds would eventually get me, and I retreated after school each day to my room, where I tried to memorize Hamlet's soliloquy-I'm not sure why I chose this-while below my window my contemptuous friends yelled up at me, demanding that I play football or they'd beat me up. "Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," I replied. At that time, I wanted to be an actor-and I thought that memorizing Shakespeare would lift me out ofSlippery Rock. It didn't, and I suffered my share ofslings and arrows at the hands ofmy friends. One night, on my way home from Boy Scouts, Dick, Steve, and Joey ambushed me near our apartment complex: for refusing to play football anymore, for being a hick, aJew, a Boy Scout (they hated Boy Scouts, too).Joey and Steve grabbed me and held me against a wall while gangly Dick started bearing me, but with an improbable object, a gigantic inflated inner tube. It kind ofhurt, but not much. It surprised me more than anything, and it was awkward for him. I think it wore him out before...