Last night, I dreamt that I lived a day in the life of both a football coach and a star quarterback. Yeah, so my dream is totally different than real life. I mean this could never actually be true, right? Right.
- Paul Wong
- Joe Smith
A COACH’S DAY
Time: 11:15 a.m.
Setting: Shack behind 7-Eleven.
Coach frantically awakens in a puddle of his own drool. “Oh man. I can’t believe I overslept again,” the coach whimpers. “He’s going to kill me.”
Coach quickly slaps on his Nike sweats and apron and rushes out the door. He’s already late for his first – and most important – duty of the day: Being the personal cook for the basketball coach, a job every other coach at the school shares. Coach scampers up the steps to a three-story palace and rings the doorbell. He is welcomed with a stern, sarcastic look.
“Hey, Mr. Motor City Bowl – you’re late,” the basketball coach yells.
The red-faced Coach quickly prepares the basketball coach’s favorite – scrambled eggs – and brings him the morning paper. “They really don’t like you here do they,” the basketball coach says while reading a front-page news story calling for Coach’s head. “Wait a minute … I’ve told you a million times – I like my eggs over easy! Not scrambled! Can’t you do anything right?”
Coach shrugs, puts his tail between his legs and leaves. It’s time for him to bail out a couple of his players from jail before he heads to afternoon recess – errr “practice.”
Time: 1:15 p.m.
Setting: Practice field.
Coach stands on the 50-yard line with his hands on his hips and his patented dazed and confused look on his face. He sees the quarterbacks hovering around a garbage can, giggling incessantly as they take turns passing around something that Coach mistakes for an elongated inhaler.
“I didn’t know you guys have asthma,” Coach says before blowing the whistle, signifying the end of “free time.” After watching game film marked “Girls Gone Wild,” Coach heads to Super Kmart for what he calls his “night job.” Ever since school administrators “fixed the glitch” and stopped Coach’s paycheck, he’s had to work 25 hours a week bagging Martha Stewart lingerie.
Time: 1 a.m.
Setting: Back to the shack.
Coach takes the bus home. He kisses his wife and his dog goodnight before checking out his newly created homepage, www.savemyjob.com, for the second time of the day and finds some promising news.
“Hey honey,” Coach yells to his wife. “We’ve gotten two hits on the web site. I guess there is hope after all!”
A QB’S DAY
Time: 12:07 p.m.
Setting: The banks of a red-colored river.
The star quarterback wakes up facedown in the mud outside a local strip club. His head is pounding. His nose can’t stop twitching. (Now why would that be?) After a wild night of partying, he can’t remember how he got there.
“Damn, I feel dumb,” the quarterback mumbles.
Reaping the benefits of his suspension from the football team, he decides to celebrate by hitting up “Happy Hour” at a local pub. After all, a combination of nine shots of Jim Beam and a couple aspirin should help that headache, right?
On the way he runs into one of his teammates, the tight end, walking hand-in-hand with a very cute 13-year old girl.
“What’s up man. Is that your little sister?” the quarterback asks.
“Uhhh yeah … my sister,” the tight end says. “Right … my sister.”
The quarterback laughs, gives his tight end a chest bump and walks away. He’s got some business to take care of. He meets up with one of his “associates” on the street corner. “You got the stuff?” the quarterback says.
“Yeah, you can’t get it any better than this,” says his associate. “Not even on your website, (www.qbpharmacy.com).”
Just then, a gorgeous blonde from a local sorority approaches the quarterback and starts to flirt.
“Hey baby, you were smokin’ last night!” she said, flipping her hair back simultaneously.
“You’re damn right I was,” says the quarterback. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, baby!”
The quarterback then makes a pass at the blonde, which is immediately intercepted and returned for a touchdown.
Time: 7:35 p.m.
Setting: Student Union.
After another “special doctor’s appointment” the quarterback and several teammates meet up to discuss their football picks for the upcoming week. Other than losing, gambling is another team specialty.
“Hey guys, you hear we’re 16-point underdogs?” says the center.
“Yeah, that’s nothing man. We can lose by way more than that,” the quarterback said. “Put me down for 500 bucks on them – it’s a piece of cake.”
Time: 2:30 a.m.
Setting: Quarterback’s crib.
The quarterback and a few of his teammates practice doing “lines” for the rest of the night in preparation for their future roles in “Traffic 2.”
Then the alarm clock rings. It’s 9 a.m. and time for class. The quarterback laughs. We won’t be late. I called Mr. Timekeeper. He’ll take care of it.
Joe Smith’s dreams should not be taken for reality and should be considered less real than a Saturday Night Live parody or Britney Spears’ chest. If you are a psychology major and would like to comment on his dreams, you can e-mail him at josephms@umich.edu.