Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Hot Burning Memories of Iolani

Whenever I get an itch below the equator, I instantly apply a cream prescribed by my doctor and usually get instant relief. It makes me think back to the past.

During our senior year at Iolani, several members of the cross-country team came down with jock itch. For some reason, although jock straps were laundered by the Iolani staff , to the best of my knowledge, nobody in the other sports came down with this malady.

Of course, since only some members of the cross country team had the rot, we were the brunt of "don't bend over and pick up the soap in the shower " jokes. My condition became so bad that I finally had to let the coach know about it. This was nothing that one wanted to discuss with his parents.

Coach Lee Thomas suggested that I apply a cream that he had in the locker room. So I applied a large dab of the cream and swabbed it liberally over my family jewels.

It didn't take more than a minute before I started to suffer the effects of this cream. My boys were on fire! It was the hottest most painful thing that I had ever endured. Everybody around me was laughing which did not make things better.

I just had to suffer in silence and take deep breaths.....TAKE THE PAIN! I sat there with steam coming out of my ears and tears coming out of my eyes. After the longest time, the pain subsided and the coach gave me a little tube of the stuff to reapply less liberally at home.

Fond memories of our Alma Mater. I believe that I set the record that year for scoring the most points in a single sporting event at Iolani. During a cross-country meet at Laie, I scored over four hundred points. I wonder if I might hold the record even to this day?


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I remember this incident. During laundering the detergent had not gotten rinsed out athletic supporters. Because of their stiffness, I suffered from severe abrasion on the inside of my thighs. I got by with a treatment of Vaseline. Because of his treatment, Mumper was really suffering. The cream certainly lived up to its powerful name, "Atomic Balm".
George Leeper