Robofootball: Doublespin

Similar to that of Bill Clinton, Margaret Leahy had bucked the Arkansas trend of national obscurity by making a name for herself. Like Clinton, she was gifted academically and had a weird form of charisma too. She was tall, commanding, but not model-like with a somewhat odd body shape, big in the shoulders and breasts, but somewhat narrow hips in proportion. She came across as a little clumsy and top heavy at 5’10” and had sort of a Sissy Spacek freckled face with thin reddish-brown hair and white skin that burned indoors if she so much as sat in the sunlight. For all practical purposes, she could have qualified for a redhead but she purposefully dyed her hair brown to eliminate all preconceived notions about what a redhead should be. To her, being classified as a typical “redhead” was both racist and gender discriminatory; after all, redheaded men were generally not referred to as redheads, with perhaps the exception with the jokes about the redheaded stepson, and she would have come up swinging if a man so much as hinted about her hair color, even in a complimentary way.

Born in 1962 to a wealthy Little Rock family who had made a fortune in lumber in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, she led a life of privilege, definitely a minority in what was traditionally a poor state that got very little respect. Few people outside of the state knew about the vast mountain ranges in the west, the Ozark and Ouachita National Forests, the hot springs for which one of the towns was named after, the scenic rivers and valleys, and the little outback towns. Oklahoma and Texas to the west were noted more for their vast oil and cattle ranges. Missouri to the north had St. Louis and the Gateway Arch and folksy tales of the Mississippi River. Regarding the great river which made up nearly Arkansas’s entire eastern border except for that little panhandle south that Missouri poached, the state of Mississippi had been named for it and was far more associated with it though Arkansas commanded more frontage on it. Arkansas simply had no large cities on the river unlike the border town Memphis, Tennessee, or even St. Louis.

Margaret Leahy briefly noticed boys at puberty. They didn’t look as bad then as in the past, but she always towered over them through junior high school and most of high school. There was always some unwritten awkward rule against a girl being taller than the boy she was dating. It was the fault of both genders similar to interracial dating. It could certainly be done, but it did pose unique challenges going against societal norms and pressures no matter how wrong or discriminatory they seemed. Men generally preferred women who were shorter than them while women, though less inclined to physical prowess as the absolute most desirable trait, still leaned toward the tall, dark, and handsome with “tall” being number one on the list though alphabetically third. Dark, handsome, and tall didn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Rather than waste too much time with boys, Margaret concentrated her efforts in the private schools that she was fortunate to attend. Aside from being the consummate all-A valedictorian, she was captain of the debate team, the undisputed leader on the Quiz Bowl team, and as a natural progression, class president. She had her own clique of not the most attractive girls, but the absolute smartest and she was the most domineering and pushy of the group. While still in high school, she worked as an intern when Clinton was governor, getting to not only meet but interact with the man himself though she was little more than a page or glorified student gopher.

She was noticed during the campaigns as she was a tireless worker. Whether it was copying flyers, making calls, or pounding in signs or on doors, she did it all and then some. Ironically, she would lose her virginity to a high school football player, Ronald Purlock. Although she and her academic following despised cheerleaders, the football players, like her own upbringing, came from the aristocratic and monetarily elite, which made them minorities, even to a greater extent in Arkansas. Ronald was an offensive guard and defensive tackle who stood 6’4” tall and weighed about 235 pounds, but it was more of a soft, flabby 235. By football standards, that was not large at all for a lineman, but he was the biggest player on the team. Their class size was only 44 students with 24 girls and 20 boys, which was one reason that Margaret was elected president. Nearly each and every one of the boys played what sports the school offered and those like Ronald played both sides of the ball. They were in a small league playing odd schools like the Arkansas School for the Deaf and North Little Rock Baptist Church. They weren’t the sort of schools where one was going to get an athletic scholarship though Richie Jordan from Margaret’s school had gotten a partial golf scholarship to the University of Arkansas a few years back. The wealthy students were not in need of financial aid anyhow.

Ronald Purlock was a nice guy though somewhat shy, lacking in grace, and basically socially awkward. He would be voted most likely to crush a girl’s feet on the dance floor if there was such an award. He was one of two boys at the school who were taller than she. With such a small school, everyone knew everybody else, and there were rarely any left-outs at high school functions. Everyone attended the high school dances and it was Margaret who had not really asked, but just sort of grabbed his hand and pulled him on to the dance floor. The music of the time, late 1970’s was a bit rough, sappy, poppy-like love songs mixed with disco, a time when “Saturday Night Fever” and “Grease” with a young, fit John Travolta was making it big at the box office. The ’80’s would be better, but by the time Margaret left for the prestigious Vanderbilt University over in Nashville, she would be completely done with boys.

After three rounds with Ronald, she didn’t like the way sex felt, never getting past the initial pain into the realms of pleasure. She did not think that it would ever get any better for her. His sweaty perspiring body drenched and draped her own, and when they were finished, she could only dream of nothing more than a shower to get his unflattering smell off of her. They had used condoms so at least she did not have to deal with that god-awful stickiness either. It had happened in the late summer time between their junior and senior high school years when her parents were off to the seasonal cabin on Lake Sequoyah near the scenic town of Fayetteville nestled in a valley in the northwest corner of the state. It would never have worked for her and Ronald in her Mazda Miata that had been a birthday present for her sweet 16.

Though the experience of sexual intercourse was new to both of them, she had to do most of the work, taking his clothes off, her own too after he spent an ungodly amount of time attempting to unhook her bra. She was the impatient one, finally taking it off herself, slapping on a condom, and maneuvering him on top of her, guiding what she thought was an awfully small 4 inch penis for such a large man, maybe 4 ½” at best, into her as he had no clue how to do that either. She later learned that he had not even ejaculated into his little oversized raincoat the first two times. He was just too nervous and froze, just like some men can’t seem to urinate if there’s another man standing next to him, especially in large open stadium troughs with no dividers. When Ronald Purlock got nervous, he sweated buckets, enough to soak her and her bed coverings several times over. Ronald Purlock was just sloppy and the experience would turn Margaret Leahy away from men for the rest of her life.

For some reason, Margaret held on hoping that the 3rd time would be a charm, it was, but only for Ronald. Their brief two month relationship ended not long after Ronald broke the radius bone in his left forearm while playing defensive tackle. He had broken through the line and slapped the ball out of the quarterback’s hand, causing a fumble just as the quarterback had cocked his arm back to throw. Since the ball came loose before the arm motion came forward, it was a legitimate fumble. In a mad scramble for the ball, he had his own arm bent awkwardly in the ensuing melee just above the football. His own fellow linebacker jumped for the ball, missed, but landed directly on Ronald’s already bent arm. The audible snap was heard by no one, not even Ronald, because of the shouting and scrambling about for the loose ball. Ironically, the quarterback got it back after squeezing under Ronald’s arm that now hung at a weird unnatural angle after being bent backward beyond the breaking point.

The injury turned Margaret off even more so than the excessive perspiration. Ronald ended up in a cast that the entire class signed, but it made him more uncoordinated than ever, though it was his left arm and he was naturally right handed. It smelled funny, itched, and although the bone was healing nicely, it got infected, just a slight one, but there was a new round of treatments for what turned out be a bloody putrid mess that required resetting, more treatments, more bandages, and to Margaret, it always had this sickly odor about it. It not only turned her off to men, but to the sport of football too.

From there she took more of an active interest in the negative aspects of sports, especially on their general emphasis in both high school and college over academics. The public school system she came to realize with disdain was far worse than her lily white academy in focusing on sports. She did her own research on football and was appalled at the injury rates and the violence at all levels, from pee-wee to pro. When she compared the salaries of college football coaches to university presidents, it sickened her to see that many were 4, 5, and even 10 times higher. How could that be? Why didn’t the universities do something about it? Had to be money as the Berzzini’s, Licavoli’s, and Verlucci’s of the world would understand. It was here that her campaign against football specifically would begin; after all, it was the absolute worst sport for violence and resulting injuries. It was the biggest too, and Margaret was not one to start with ordinary hills or small mountains, she would aim for Everest.

It wasn’t Margaret’s first foray into protesting what she didn’t think was right. She would be anti-drug, organize a SADD (Students Against Drunk Driving) chapter at both her high school and later at Vanderbilt similar to that of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), march for gay rights though in her life she would never declare herself a lesbian, and would always champion such women’s issues as pro choice and medical testing and research, at least equal to what was being done for men. She briefly entertained the thought of entering a convent, but the life of a nun seemed far too quiet and subdued. She wanted to be heard by people, not god.

Much of her protesting nature was due to her budding political career. She would be elected class vice president at Vanderbilt and she happened to be in the right place at the right time when Bill Clinton ascended to the presidency in 1992. After graduating with a Bachelors Degree in English, followed up by a Masters in Political Science also at Vanderbilt, she returned to Little Rock and won an election as a state representative at the age of 27. With her association with Clinton along with some family money and additional connections that being part of the aristocracy often brings, she made it to the U.S. House of Representatives at age 30. Like Clinton, she bucked the trends of what was often a Red State, to become a democratic member of the U.S. Congress. It didn’t hurt that the married Republican incumbent had been caught with his pants down, literally with his secretary and a college student aide, a ménage-a-trois right in his campaign office after hours, and this from a man who had constantly campaigned on family values. The Bible thumpers jumped on her side in a heartbeat.

With a strong base of women supporters garnered from her time in both high school and college, she established her own organization to go head-to-head against the sport of football, the Mothers Against Football Injuries Association, aptly, the MAFIA, making the end of violence in the support her personal crusade. Her initial bills in Congress were either laughed at or ignored, but in the short run, she had planted some seeds. They would take a long, long time to grow like a white cedar tree or a Galapagos turtle, but grow they would.

“Love is our only reason for living and the only purpose of life. We live for the sake of love, and we live seeking love. For the sake of love an actor performs, and for the sake of love a writer writes. For the sake of love a sensualist enjoys the pleasures of the body, and for the sake of love a meditator turns within and is isolated from the world. We say, ‘If I do not find love today, perhaps I will find it tomorrow. If I do not find it in this person, perhaps I will find it in that one.’ Love is essential for all of us.

It is not surprising that we keep searching for love, because we are all born with love. We come out of love. All of us are nothing but the vibrations of love. We are sustained by love, and in the end we merge back into love. The world is nothing but a school of love; or relationships with our husband or wife, with our children and parents, with our friends and relatives are the university in which we are meant to learn what love and devotion truly are.”

Swami Muktananda, Love