If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it.
-- Marcus Aurelius
When my otherwise saintly schoolmates sinned, at the top of their list was the epithet "dumb jock" followed somewhat closely by references to ROTC and dumb ROTC students. My third year roommate, who had many fine qualities, had a very patricain Wellesley distain for "dumb jocks" and in particular his hulking lab partner who was on the football team. Years later at dinner during a visit to Seattle I was stunned to learn that my roommate's life had been changed by taking up marital arts and kendo...he should have given his lovely Japanese-American wife some credit, too.
Here's my dumb jock story.
One day after a session in the weight room, Bill says I've got to see the coach. We go upstairs to the freshman coach's office, Carlin Lynch and Bill talk for a few minutes, and then Lynch looks at me and asks: "Are you going to play football for us in the fall." You could have knocked me over with a feather. I'd grown a lot in the last year, but hadn't played football in high school. This was an exciting question. Holy Cross had played in the Orange Bowl, I'd seen them play Syracuse and Ernie "The Express" Davis. I might even get to play against Floyd Little. I already believed I was going to play in the NHL or be a Navy pilot like my Uncle Rob, one of the NAS Paxtuxent test pilots Tom Wolfe wrote about in the "The Right Stuff." So why not. Anything's possible when you're 19. Bill and I were chasing legends.
Reality set in fast. Reality was Richard Krzyzek, junior starting right side linebacker for the Holy Cross varsity. Reality was a one-on-one drill with Krzyzek. And that seemed to happen every practice. In high school I hit the star player for Long Beach high so hard with a clean check during an ice hockey game that he was out cold for five minutes. Oh, my God! He's not moving. I was scared to death I'd killed him. I hit Krzyzek and nothing happened. Trying to block him was like running into a brick wall that hit you back. What does getting your bell rung mean? It means your brain slaps against the inside of your skull so hard your ears ring. My ears are still ringing. The frightening thing was Krzyzek did this absolutely without malice. There were no histrionics. He never said a word. I thought, whatever you do don't make this guy mad.
At the class of 70's twentieth reunion there was a slide show after the class dinner with pictures from our days at Holy Cross. Midway through the show up pops Krzyzek. In a football helmet he looked like Maximus Decimus Meridus, the Gladiator, ready to personally lead the legions of Marcus Aurelious into the forests of the Macomanni during the Bellum Germanicum. In the darkness, from the back of the room someone shouted, I'M STILL SCARED OF THAT GUY!
Sophomore year Father Maurice Riedy, who help coach freshman football in additon to teaching history and being a trustee of the college, stopped me on the way to class. How are you, Jim, we miss you on the hill [the football practice fields above the dormitories]. Thank you, father, but I need to spend more time with my studies. (I'm scared to death of Krzyzek and want to take a shot at being a Navy pilot while I have a few brain cells left. Who knows. I did well in calculus, physics and probability, I might even have a shot at being an astronaut like Joseph Kerwin, MD, Holy Cross '53. Anything's possible when you're 20.) Come to think of it, though, Father Reidy also coached lacrosse and that's where he missed me. I'd scored two goals against the Harvard freshman. I was a pretty miserable football player.
I confess to this freely. As soon as I got my first Holy Cross alumni directory, the first thing I did was look up Krzyzek, hoping to discover he was janitor someplace. What I found was Richard Krzyzek, PhD, director of microbiology research and development, seriously high tech company. Not bad for the son of a postal worker and teacher... no offense to teachers and the post office.
"Specialists in cell signaling have also learned to take advantage of new research techniques as soon as they become available. 'RNA interference has so many advantages over knockin and knockout mice. It enables you to modulate the amount of knockdown,' Richard Krzyzek [VP Research] says. 'Phosphorus specific antibodies have become immense tools. And single cell methods are starting to gain a lot of popularity.'"
I sure wish old Krzyzek had figured out that stuff about saving knockout mice before he experimented on me.
