Senior Year Box Set

Back in the day, Oklahoma had been in the National Championship conversation every year. Nebraska had left for the Big Ten, Texas had unexplainably fallen to mediocrity, and Baylor had fired their head coach in the wake of a sexual-assault scandal. With all that, you would think it would open the door for Oklahoma to step in and fill the void. Somehow, they found a way to not live up to their fans’ expectations. You don’t tag yourself #ChampU on social media for no reason—clearly, Oklahoma’s fans expected more.

Oklahoma was one of those programs that intrigued me. They had almost everything in place to return to their former glory. This would be one of those situations, like at Florida or USC, where if you helped them win a National Championship, you would be a hero. In football, no one player could do it by himself. That was why I always made it a point to share my teammates’ contributions to victories. I just felt that Oklahoma was close, and I could see Wolf, Tim, and me possibly getting them there.

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In the morning, everyone met in the hotel lobby. We’d drawn both Paul and Chuck for security this weekend because my mom and dad had joined us. We had to all squeeze into a corner of the lobby because there were 22 other families here for the weekend.

“Tami called me last night and said Alan has enrolled at Wesleyan. I can just imagine the trouble he and Mike might come up with,” Tim announced.

“I would never have guessed he would do some of the things he’s done,” Mom said, shaking her head.

“Seriously?” I asked in disbelief. “This is the same Alan who about burned our house down. He’s the kid who took one of Tami’s bras and brought it to school. He’s the kid you threatened to kill on more than one occasion.”

“Alan never did seem to have much impulse control,” Dad added.

“I guess. I just didn’t think he was really that bad a kid,” Mom said.

Alan really wasn’t a bad kid. He just got bad ideas. In the past, we—usually Jeff—could talk him out of them without too much trouble. If all else failed, Tami would smack him in the forehead. It was sort of like hitting a puppy on the nose if he were bad. The only problem was the puppy learned from the experience; Alan … not so much.

On the other hand, Alan was fiercely loyal. He really bought into the four-Musketeer thing when we were younger. It was Alan, Jeff, Tami, and me against the world. He was also incredibly smart and a little bulldog. Whenever we would get a new video game, he was the first one to figure it out. He taught himself how to code when he was ten, so it wasn’t uncommon for him to hack a game in his favor.

The problem with Alan was he was a total spaz. He was one of those kids who were too smart for their own good. When he got bored, his mind drifted off towards mischief. Left unchecked, he did things like steal Lisa’s private blog or accidentally set our house on fire.

My mom had been super-pissed at that one. I remember it was right before my birthday because we had a supply of fireworks one of our parents had bought us. We were at my house because both my parents worked. Tami had been smart enough to tell us we couldn’t go to her home to set them off. It’s a wonder no one ever blew a finger off.

Jeff had talked me into getting my old plastic army men out. We built battle scenes and then used the firecrackers to blow them up. Of course, that got boring, and we wanted bigger and better explosions. At some point, Alan got the bright idea to get duct tape and combine a bunch of bottle rockets and firecrackers together. He reasoned that we needed to figure out how long the fuses should be so that everything would explode at the same time.

I think my mom had some kind of sixth sense that told her when the four of us were about to do something incredibly stupid. She pulled into the drive just as Alan struck the match. Our homemade rocket shot up and took a ninety-degree turn. Alan would later explain he’d miscalculated the wind drag. Of course, he was full of it. Only half the rockets had gone off at first, and when the others ignited, they’d changed the direction.

We all watched in horror as the rocket crashed through the kitchen window. Everything might have been okay, but it got caught in the curtain, which burst into flames when all the firecrackers exploded. The ‘four dumbasses,’ as my mom called us from that day forward, stood and watched in terror. Thankfully, Mom rushed in and used the sprayer from the kitchen sink to put the fire out.

“I don’t know why he decided to go to Wesleyan. It’s not like Mike will be his evil butt-buddy in crime. Mike can’t stand Alan,” Wolf said.