An Elephant In The Room

A Bench Warmer Memory from Tom Davis

I write this with apologies to Don Scalf, my old college basketball coach, and all those who sat the bench with me back in the early 1960s at North Carolina Wesleyan College.

We were a Division 3 school that played in the old Dixie Conference.

The guys on the bench nicknamed me Elephant which may have had something to do with size, weight and those old wire rimmed athletic glasses I wore.

Since playing time was at best rare, I tended to concentrate on the performance of the game’s referees.

So, we were playing St. Andrews College’ at their place,  and there was this little blond ref who called everything in the home team’s favor, the worst game I’d ever seen officiated.

Now, when it was over, and we were headed back to the loser’s locker room, I caught up with this ref in the crowd. I leaned over and commented on his night’s work including an aside, a very personal remark with included an “improper” reference regarding his relationship with his mother.

And then I was gone, joining my teammates headed to the locker room. Minutes later I looked up from my locker, and there he was---right in our coach’s face, screaming about the “unpleasantness” with one of his players.

Suddenly I am literally the Elephant in the Room, and here they come in tandem looking for the guilty party to identify. I had only one choice and that was to hide, not an easy task when you are one of my size.

I hid behind a row of lockers, and here they came. Then I slid off to a trainer’s room. When I saw them headed my way there, I actually tried to wedge into a stall in the bathroom, but the commodes were all in post-game use.

Boy, they weren’t giving up. I could hear them questioning players. The heat was clearly on. And, I have no idea why I did this, but I just got out of my uniform, slipped those athletic glasses of mine in an open locker, and jumped in the gang shower where I stayed soaped up until I finally heard the locker room door slam for what I hoped was the last time.

Now, this story ends in the Wesleyan athletic van. I heard this part second hand from one of my fellow bench warmers. It seems that coach Scalf, who always drove, realized that I was among the missing. “Where’s Elephant?” 

“I think he’s still in the shower,” one of my bench warmers said.  “Still in the shower? He hasn’t broken a sweat all year!” 

When I finally arrived at the van, I received a “sitting” ovation. All the coach said was, “It was you wasn’t it, Elephant?”  I found a seat without bothering to take the fifth or say no comment. 

For years at reunions or whenever I’d see coach Don Scalf he’d say, “It was you wasn’t it, Elephant?”  Until now I’ve never come clean. But if Coach is looking down, I will say this: “Well, Coach, now you know the story of the Benchwarmer, The Elephant, The Ref and the Shower.”  

Tom Davis went on to a career in education where he coached high school football, taught history, then served as a high school principal. He ended his “educational” career as the assistant superintendent of North Carolina’s Johnson County School system.