Crouching below the top of the stainless steel countertop, Joey shivered in abject fear. He had just watched two awful men beat and rape his sobbing, screaming mother, and then drag her into her laboratory office where she did her research, her life’s work, the study of the musculature of upper primates.

The poor boy was scared out of his wits. At the tender age of eight, he was neither mentally or emotionally prepared to deal with what he had just witnessed. He could barely keep his bowels from soiling his underwear. Shamed beyond belief by his naïve impotence, the poor boy cowered, a shivering pudding of self-condemning cowardice.

Trying desperately to figure out a way that he could somehow help his loving mother, he crawled on his hands and knees toward the door that led to the corridor, and then hopefully to his freedom so he could call for help. Half way to the door, he noticed the refrigerated locker where his mother kept her vials of research formulas. He had always been fascinated by what she did. The young boy also saw a drawer labeled “Sharps”. He remembered that his mother had told him that meant sharp things, like needles and scalpels. He crawled over to it. As he raised up to open the drawer, he saw through the glass front of the refrigerated locker the various vials of serums that his mother had been developing.

With a sudden burst of hope, he remembered her telling him that an ape, such as a chimpanzee, is ten times as strong as a man. His mother had been studying this phenomenon in depth, and had confided to him that she might have discovered how to make humans stronger in the process. She had explained that her research might help people with muscle problems like polio, muscular dystrophy, and nervous disorders regain control of their bodies.

Suddenly the boy had a vision that if he injected himself with the serum, he would be ten times as strong as the men that were hurting his mother. Willing to risk his own life for her, he stealthily withdrew a syringe from the “Sharps” drawer, then found the vial he thought his mother had told him contained her new serum for muscular development. Trying to remember just how she injected the apes, he filled the syringe with serum, then tapped it as he forced a bit of serum through the needle, then closing his eyes, jammed the needle into his thigh. He ejected the syringe load into his muscle, then repeated the procedure for both arms and his other leg.

Disappointed that he felt no different, but knew that his mother’s cries for help were becoming weaker and more garbled, hoping against hope that her serum had worked on him, he ran as fast as he could to her office door and jumped into the room, screaming as loud as he could, taking a stance that looked like the karate actors in the movies.

The men looked up from what they were doing to his mother and burst out laughed. One of them walked over to him, still laughing, and without batting an eyebrow, hit him full in the face, instantly knocking him unconscious.

When he awoke a while later, his mother was dead, and the police were covering her body with a blanket.

The young boy would never forget that awful scene, the sounds of his mother’s valiant dying struggle, nor how utterly impotent he had been to help her.

“Joey!” called Tim, “You going out for football? I am! I can hardly wait to bash helmets with the guys!”

Joey looked at his friend. Joey had no desire to play rough games, especially not football, and especially not with the cretins of his world. They were all so much larger than him, and so much dumber. They seemed obsessed with girls and the disgusting subject of sex, and bragging about how much better at everything they were than anyone else.

At a mere 5’ 6” tall, Joey was no size match for the guys that had already gotten their full growth and were shooting up way past his short stature. “No way man, I don’t like football. Can’t believe YOU do either.”

Joey jogged off toward home, leaving his best friend standing there looking quite hurt and bewildered by his best friend’s insulting comment. It was the first time Joey had ever said anything mean to him.

Timothy did go out for football, and easily made the starting team as fullback. He had a wonderfully successful season, and was expected to take over the first string fullback position the next year when the varsity senior fullback graduated that spring. Tim’s soaring popularity assuaged the hurt that his best friend’s acid comments had caused. He soon forgot about them.

Tim played football every year and was expected to graduate with good grades and a full ride scholarship to a major university.

Joey’s dad was deeply disappointed in his son’s lack of interest in sports, but did not overtly push him to join in. Nor did his father ever remarry after losing the love of his life. The summer after Joey’s junior year, his father was tragically killed in a highway accident. Joey was left without a place to live. His dreams of going to college came to a screeching halt.

The football coach and Joey’s father had been good friends for years. Coach Ralph invited Joey to move in with he and his wife during his senior year. A grateful Joey packed up his few worldly possessions and moved down the street to Coach Ralph’s house.

As could be expected, Coach Ralph began to watch Joey closely. He recognized the boy’s short stature, but also saw something that no one else noted. Joey had a fluid grace and a certainty of movement that few boys his age possessed.

Using the “farming” technique he had learned in college where his major had been psychology, Coach started “farming” Joey. The two soon grew fond of each other, developing a trusting relationship that Joey had been missing since his mother’s death. By two weeks before his senior year started, Joey had agreed to at least try out for the football team.

Daily doubles started that following week. The whole team suffered horribly through those two murderous weeks. Everyone except Joey, that is. He seemed to breeze through the twice-daily workouts as if he were already in superb shape. Joey somehow always managed to skip out of the locker-room without taking a shower. He hated the idea of a communal shower with all those stupid cretins with their big floppy dicks and cruel pranks.

Coach Ralph watched the team carefully, looking for the right person to take over the totally vacant quarterback slot. The team had won the state championship the year before, so Coach expected to have a year of rebuilding, especially with an inexperienced leader, a person playing quarterback for the first time.

At the end of the first week of daily doubles, Coach Ralph made a list of five potential quarterbacks. He called them into his office after practice on the following Monday, the first day of school. Joey was among the five, though considered a long shot because of his short stature and light build.

“All right guys! Listen up! We need a quarterback, and we need a back up quarterback. Now, the job of quarterback requires special skills. You must first be able to learn all of the plays and recall them instantly. You must be able to read the opponents defenses and know instantly if the play that is due to be run will succeed or fail against the defense the opponent sets up in. You must have good timing, and good muscle control. And lastly, you must have excellent hand eye coordination and depth perception for passing.

“We will be doing testing of everyone in this room starting tomorrow after school. So you five report here to this office in uniform but without pads. Is that clear?”

The guys all agreed to meet with Coach the following day.

The last thing Coach Ralph did was to hand out the playbook for the year. “You will all be tested from memory on these plays tomorrow afternoon. Memorize them forwards and backwards. Understand?”

All of the boys nodded uncertainly. The playbook was about an inch thick.

Confused as to why Coach had picked him to try out for quarterback, Joey never the less spent four hours that evening inputting the plays into a 3D video football game program he had. He then played each of them several times in order to visualize what the play would look like from the quarterback's position. He then spent another few hours the next morning utilizing the same plays in the defensive positions to see what worked and what didn’t against the selected defense.

The second day of school in his senior year was like every day of his previous 8 years. Verbal harassment, unending intimidation, and lots of shoving people around in the hallways. Short guys like him always got the brunt of the larger built bullies.

Joey had learned to ignore it. When his buddy Tim was around, the harassment died off. But as soon as Tim was gone, the larger built boys took great delight in their bullying of him.

His nickname had become “Whatever”, which was his constant reply to any of the hazing he received. His straight A average seemed to be his biggest harassment issue. But learning had been always been easy for him. His photographic memory and his quick sense of logic were perfect for learning mundane high school subjects.

To say he was popular or unpopular avoided the real point. People simply ignored him. Both girls and boys seemed not to even notice him when he passed by.

As with all else, Joey had learned to ignore it.

Joey dreamed of football that night. In his dream he was playing quarterback for his team in the state championships. He woke up when a huge tackle and even bigger guard were coming at him on the last play of the last quarter. It was a pass play. And it was up to him to deliver the ball to the receiver and either win the game. Or lose in lasting ignominy. Their monster shoulder guards smashed into him just as he threw the football. That was when he was jarred awake by the alarm clock he had set for early so that he could work some more on the playbook.

He awoke in a drenching sweat, breathing hard, afraid he had again let his beloved deceased mother, his always aloof and distant father, and his Coach down.