I Didn't Drop Kick Your Hamster...

1982... my freshman year in high school. Soccer was my sport and time-killer. The city's best goalie lived four doors down from my house, and a great striker (forward) lived two doors further. Nearly every day after school, the three of us practiced soccer at a church field across the road. Soon, I became better with my feet than my hands (or so I thought).

One afternoon, on a Saturday, I rode with a friend to a girl's house. My friend liked this girl and was about to ask her to 'go' with him (our word for dating in the 80's). Her mom was home, as well as the girl's younger sister. The three of us teenagers were hanging out in the kitchen. Her little sister, seven or eight at the time, kept popping into the room to listen to us. She took a liking to me and asked if I wanted to meet her pet hamster. I wasn't interested but didn't want to hurt her feelings, so I said "sure". She took off to her bedroom and returned with a little, golden brown hamster in her hands.

Now, to me, a hamster was just one notch higher on the rodent extermination scale than a mouse. I agreed to see it, but I wasn't interested in handling the thing. She kept begging me to hold it, though, and eventually I gave in. She put the clump of fur in my hands and I held it gingerly to my chest, being as gentle as I could until I could give it back. This hamster wasn't content with being held by a stranger, as it turned out. It wanted the full run of me. Using its agile little feet, it climbed my t-shirt in half a second. For a few, tense moments, it sat still on my left shoulder. Then, in a dead run, it circled my neck to the other shoulder, scaring the hell out of me! All the while, I felt his dagger-like toenails piercing through my cotton shirt and into my skin with every step. The little girl giggled, and my friend and his potential girlfriend laughed at how uncomfortable I was.

The little rodent darted around my neck again and ended up on my left shoulder now. This time, he stood on his back legs and stretched his tiny body enough to sniff my ear, his back toenails, of course, still anchored in my shoulder. In some considerable pain now, I reached up and around with my right hand to pull him off of me. His nails remained dug in. I let go of him and looked to the little girl and her sister for help. They were both laughing hard at my suffering now, which pissed me off. Again I reached to pull the little monster off the base of my neck, but this time he panicked and jumped off my shoulder to avoid being grabbed! Being 5'9" myself, he had at least a five foot fall to the hard, tile floor. My soccer instincts kicked in and I brought my right foot up to meet his plummeting body. The intention was to catch him (trap, in soccer terms) with the instep of my foot and break his fall to the floor. The moment this was happening, the girls' mother walked into the kitchen to see what her daughters were laughing so loudly about. She arrived just in time to see the hamster in free fall and my foot coming up to meet him. I'm sure the hamster was planning on landing on its feet, but my shoe caught him flush on his back, about a foot from the ground. He bounced off my Adidas like a Hacky Sack ball, sailing about four feet to my left into a cabinet door and tumbling to the ground. The little girl screamed at me and started crying. Her mother assumed I had just drop kicked her daughter's hamster!

The next few minutes left me in a daze. The little girl was crying continuously while her mother screamed to me that I'd kicked their beloved pet. Next came her threats to call the police and have me arrested. I pleaded my case as emphatically as possible, swearing I was just trying to break its fall. She would NOT believe me, and threw my friend and me out of her house! The worse part of it was the stern and hateful look I got from the little girl just before her mother slammed door on us. I'm sure I'm the villain in the story as she's undoubtedly retold it many times over the last four decades, but I maintain my innocence.

Just trying to set the record straight after all these years.

BTW, the hamster was fine.