Dear Ask Boz,

It's really your second question that reveals the answer to the first: yes, he could throw a football over a mountain. Now, Mt. Cialis wasn't the tallest mountain around, by far, but he could throw it over a 1000 foot peak clean to the other side. At first daddy was against telling anyone, afraid your Uncle be taken and weaponized by the government, like happened to Mustard Ass Larry. But ain't nothin' would stop Coach when he heard about a kid with talent, and he was awful fixed on making Rico his quarterback.

You'd probably be surprised to hear your Uncle didn't even play in 9th grade. See, he couldn't control how far he threw the ball. First day of practice, he threw 12 balls over Highway 6 and into Woodcock River. Coach had to sit him until he could figure out what to do.

It was one of them short bungee cords that did the trick. Coach attached one end to Rico's shoulder and the other to his wrist. The elastic would slow his movement way down and keep the ball inside the park. Your Uncle worked and worked at it until the day they took the bungee off. Sure enough, he had trained his arm, and he could control the length of his balls.

Problem was that by shortening his throwing length, it increased his throwing speed. A lot. Your Uncle Rico's balls were clocked upwards of three-hundred miles an hour. Still, we tried to catch them. It sounds crazy, Jeff, but it was the 50's, and boys were men, and men were wife-beating drunks. I was the first to try to catch his speedy balls, which is why my hands are the way they are, and why you call me Uncle Flappy. I was lucky; my hands are still attached. We had to start numbering kids with the nickname "Stumpy." I think we got up to Stumpy 17 before Coach was finally ready to admit defeat.

Then Bobby "Ironhands" Luke came along. His hands were part iron. He was involved in a freak smelting accident when he was six, and iron ore fused with his flesh. As long as Ironhands was out there, Rico had a target for his high-speed balls. Coach could finally play his lethal quarterback in games, and we won every game Rico started. See, after Rico beheaded a few linebackers the defenses kinda just got out of the way.

But then what we all feared finally happened: Bobby's arms fell clean off. Seemed the weight of iron hands and the repeated impact of Rico's hard balls was too much for his body to take. Bobby tried to keep playing, but he wasn't much good without arms.

Coach tried everything to replace Bobby: receivers wrapped their hands with the softest, most absorbent toilet paper; they taped tampons to each finger; they dipped their hands in molten steel. But this only produced a TP shortage, a spike in female rage and odor, and a lot of cool looking but useless metal hands.

In the end, there was nothing Coach could do. It only took a few frivolous lawsuits on behalf of headless boys to bench old Rico, even though it was the playoffs. I remember we all cried that day in the locker room. Except Johnny. He wanted to, but he didn't know how.

I'll tell you though, your Uncle was a team player. Sure was disappointed, but he was all smiles and high-fives on the bench. They had to stop him from the high fives, though, because he'd break your arm.

Boz

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