Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 28, 1995 TAG: 9508280132
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The following is fiction and is not based on anything that has happened recently that might make you think I'm a sexist hawg:
Joseph Strongheart, a linebacker from Akron, Ohio, liked to tat, sew, do needlepoint, dust stuff and paint flowers. Thus he decided he wanted to enter Miss Charles' Academy for Young Ladies.
He turned down a scholarship to Penn State. He said he wanted to forget gridiron brutality. He said he wanted to enhance his skills in gentle pursuits that wouldn't hurt his knees.
Miss Charles hired some high-powered lawyers to keep Strongheart out of the academy.
The lawyers made a lot of money, and Miss Charles appeared frequently on television, wearing a nice two-piece suit of nubby material, gloves and a very nice lapel watch. She said things like:
"I suspect that when we went through the dinner drill, Mr. Strongheart would be quite put out. I daresay he may not know his salad fork from the butter knife.
"One can only speculate on what he might do on those occasions when we wear white gloves until it feels our very fingers are going to fall off. I'm quite sure he wouldn't make it through the flower-painting drill for freshladies - which is a part of Hades Week, as the students call it.''
And Strongheart comes on TV and says he could handle the dinner drill. He says his mama taught him that you work from outside to the inside with your dinner silver. He says wearing gloves doesn't bother a linebacker and that he could flower-paint all of those girls into the ground.
The courts rule Strongheart can enter the academy. On the first day of Hades Week, however, he runs screaming from the room after only six hours of merciless flower-painting.
Six female members of the freshman class do the same thing, but Strongheart is the news here.
Most of the academy's students, all wearing gloves to perfection, cheer when they hear Strongheart has dropped out.
An obviously shaken Strongheart holds a news conference in which he says:
"I should have played hurt during Hades Week. I'm going back to brutality and I hope Penn State will still have me. I've lost a little confidence and I need to get my game face on again.
"Basically, I'm a barbarian. I know now that barbarians don't plant flowers. I did want a shot at the dinner drill, though."
by CNB