Jessie & The Tornado Ch. 05

Jessie keeps threatening to drag me back onto a soccer field and this time she says she won't take it so easy on me.

She actually talked me into playing soccer against her ONCE. I played goalie.

This was only a month after she gave birth to the twins and I wasn't really worried. After all, how much damage could a brand new mom do to me? I mean she was still recovering from the long, long labor, still carrying some of the extra weight she had gained during the pregnancy, and I knew she had to be out of shape.

I had played soccer throughout my elementary school days, usually as a goalie. It was only after I was in high school I gave up soccer to concentrate on other sports, but would still sometimes work out with my high school soccer team to keep my goalie skills sharp.

Plus this would be the first time she had been on a soccer field since she had broken two toes the previous May. I thought I was safe.

BIG mistake.

It took me a couple of days to walk unaided. It took two weeks for most of the bruises to fade away. Even worse, she called some of our friends from the fire department and they taped the whole damn thing -- from multiple angles.

That is a source of endless amusement to everyone at the fire department.

They call it "The day the bad-ass, dumb-ass Marine got his ass handed to him by a girl."

My so-called friends from the fire department took all the different videos of the soccer debacle and actually hired some guy to put them together in the form of what looks like a Hollywood movie.

The film opens with a shot of the Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington, D.C., then pans to the inscription at the bottom, "Uncommon Valor Was A Common Virtue," which was what Admiral Chester Nimitz said about the Marines on Iwo Jima.

The film then cuts to a shot of a soccer ball bouncing off my head and into the goal.

Next, the film showed the inscription about "The Marines Have Landed And The Situation Is Well In Hand," which dates back to our landing in Panama in 1885.

The film then cuts to a shot of a soccer ball hitting me squarely in the stomach and my collapsing on the ground. The ball slowly rolled into the goal.

The next shot shows the immortal words of Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly, who during the battle of Belleau Woods, during World War I, yelled to his men, "Come on, you sons-of-bitches! Do you want to live forever?"

The film shows me, after I got completely twisted around on a play, with the soccer ball bouncing off my butt into the goal.

The next shot showed an inscription I had never seen before: "The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!" Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States, 1945.

After that, well the film really turned nasty: at least to my point of view. I actually blocked several shots, but somehow not a single one of those made it in the final film!

After a number of additional shots of soccer balls bouncing off different parts of my body and into the goal . . . well the final shot showed a soccer ball hitting me . . . below the belt and bouncing into the goal, followed by my rolling around on the ground clutching my . . . privates.

Jessie was on her hands and knees crying, thinking she had probably killed me.

At least the film ended on a somewhat positive note: A quote by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, "Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem."

The film continues with some pictures of me in my dress blue uniform with my medals on my chest, followed by a close-up of just those medals. Next came the headline in the local paper about my rescuing Jessie from her house, followed by a number of photos of the absolute destruction of the house after the tornado.

Apparently someone had also gotten copies of the photos from the paper showing both Jessie and I helping people at the hospital, then the photo of us kissing between patients.

Then the film cut back to the debacle at the soccer field and the final play when the soccer ball hit me below the belt.

But at least the film ended with Jessie and me kissing, before she helped me limp to the car.

Jessie and I have done our best to make Winston and Gloria happy.

Six weeks after the honeymoon, we found out Jessie was pregnant . . . with twins, two daughters.

Two years later we added Samuel Obediah Walker, Jr.

It is now two years after that, and I am almost in a state of stunned disbelief. Jessie is pregnant again, and today we had a sonogram. I am soon going to be the father of triplets. It looks like two girls and a boy. That will be four girls, and two boys.

Jessie's mom says the twins are already taller than Jessie was at four years of age. My father is just over six feet, two inches, and Winston is even taller at six feet, four inches, so it is going to be interesting to see what happens in the next 14 years!

For the twins' recent fourth birthday, in addition to all the clothes, dolls and other toys, I also bought each a miniature soccer ball. After Jessie left the room to cut their birthday cake, I explained to the girls that while their mom liked to "try" to play soccer, she really wasn't that good and that any time they wanted to play, they needed to come and get me. I told them this would be "our little secret" and not to make their mom feel bad by asking her to play.

After we ate the cake, Jessie asked the twins if they wanted to play soccer with her, and she was more than a little disappointed when they both said they wanted "Daddy" to teach them.

Now, it drives Jessie crazy that any time the girls want to play soccer outside, they come and get me. Even when Jessie offers to play, to teach them, they just say, "Ah, Mom, Daddy can teach us."

Yes, I know that when one of them finally slips up and tells Jessie what I said she is probably going to kill me. And death will just be a start for what she has in mind. Probably cut my head off and use IT for a soccer ball.

Oh, and speaking of soccer, remember Jessie's friend Rachel, who once threatened to "rip my balls off?" She went on to play soccer professionally, and won an Olympic Gold Medal in soccer.

Every year Rachel visits Jessie and stays with us for a week or two. And every year Rachel tells both Jessie and me that I need a REAL woman to keep me happy . . . someone like, well, Rachel!

I will freely admit something, since Jessie knows and understands.

As much as I love Jessie -- and I love her so much it hurts to even think how close she came to being killed by that tornado -- on August 15^th of each year I get a little . . . emotional. You never forget your first love.

Jessie always takes that day off, if it falls on a weekday, so she can just be with me. To offer a shoulder to cry on, or someone to talk to, to help ease the pain.

This next August 15^th, however, will probably be a different story. That is Jessie's due date, and so far she has been completely on target.

Now, I will have something to celebrate, something to temper the pain I still feel every year.

Somehow, I feel Debs is up there, watching, and this is her way of telling me, like she did so many, many years ago "maybe we can hold hands and keep each other from crying."

So many, many years ago, I held her hand to keep her from crying, and I think this is Debs way of telling me she is still holding my hand, and telling me she doesn't want me to cry anymore.

She doesn't want me to only remember the pain when I think about her, but to remember the good times.

Yes, I love Jessie so much. But I still love Debs as well. You never forget your first love.

I feel so blessed to have had the love of two such incredible women. As baseball great Lou Gehrig once said, "I feel like I am the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

Speaking, as I was earlier, about the Georgia Bulldogs (my now favorite football team), I have one last little story to share.

During World War I, the Marines fought the Germans at a place called Belleau Woods in France. We absolutely kicked their butts. The Germans said the Marines were the most dangerous, relentless enemy they had faced during the entire war, and wrote reports back home calling the Marines "Teufel Hunden" or Dogs from Hell, or Hounds from Hell.

That was later translated as Devil Dogs, and since 1918 has been a proud nickname for the United States Marine Corps.

Do you know which breed of dog is the mascot of the United States Marine Corps?

The English bulldog.

The same breed serves as the mascot of the University of Georgia.

So, I say again, "How 'bout them dawgs!"