This is a story based upon real events and can be considered as totally true. It happened pretty much this way.

Like a lot of guys in these stories, I could have lusted after the football coaches if I had had much contact with them, but most of my time was spent with the basketball staff. My lanky frame had taken time to develop into a tall coordinated athletic status but by the time that I had hit senior year, I was doing well as a starter on the b-ball team.

And basketball was king. In central Illinois, not far from the hot spots in Indiana where they make movies with Gene Hackman where the little Cinderella teams in Indiana always seem to end up being the sentimental winner….well, we were a little Cinderella team also, and we were damned good, even if we were not in Indiana. The five of us starters played well together, and we had been playing together for years. Our coach was fairly new to the community, not yet thirty years old, and was the Assistant Principal at the high school as well as being head coach for the team. He was also tall, at 6’4”, and very personable. Handsome. Blonde. Muscular. He looked really good in the sleeveless jersey with nice biceps and pecs that were on display when he scrimmaged and all of us guys liked him in our own way. My way included a physical admiration.

My Dad was a strong supporter, and had been an honored basketball player in his own time, in high school and in college. However, he had a quirk that was constantly a thorn in my side, and that was his hard and fast rule that I not ride the Activity Bus to the away-games. Apparently, he was aware of a tragedy of some sort, which had colored his thinking, and he was adamant that I not ride the bus. Sometimes he would be able to drive me, and at other times, there were other parents that he trusted to take me to the games. Anything, so long as it was not the bus. Once, he embarrassed me tremendously when I tried to do the bus by lying to him, and he found out before we left and came and got me out of the bus.

No one teased me about it anymore, it was just accepted. And by the time that I was a valued starter on the varsity, Coach had promised Dad that he would take responsibility to see that I got to all the games. This turned into Coach driving to most all of them, with his sending the assistant coaches and various other teachers on the school activity bus to maintain order, while he and I drove to the game-city. Sometimes his fiancé would go along, but more often it was just the two of us, and we got pretty conversational, though ninety-nine percent of it was all about basketball.

He did like the fact that he was not bound by the bus and the schedules, as it turned out. He could spend a few minutes with the other coaches, line up schedules, and be a little social without having to run to the bus to make sure we got back on time. My Dad did not care when we got back, so long as I was not on the bus.

One wintry night about forty miles from home, he had been bullshitting with the other coach, and we got quite